Muscat Contact Center 1111
Muscat Municipality

A. Problem Analysis

 1. What was the problem before the implementation of the initiative?
Muscat Municipality (MM) is the provider of essential services to more than 1 million citizens and residents of Muscat Governorate (30% of Oman population).Muscat is also the capital of the Sultanate Oman. These citizens and residents constitute the entire customers to the Municipality and they are spread over 6 districts (wilayats) and cover a total of 3,500 square km. MM provides services in the following areas; i) construction and its related activities including roads and streets, flyovers, roundabouts and public parking spaces, building permits, excavation permits, ii) Maintenance which includes lightings and maintenance of roads, streets, rent contract, municipality license, building permits, parking permission and violations, iii)Public health and protection of the environment which includes providing leftovers containers at the different areas, cleaning of roads, public squares and streets, controlling the hygiene violation, issuing of sanitary licensing, food control in all shops, insects, rodents and reptiles control. With huge customer-base distributed over a vast area, provision of quality services to the community remains a constant challenge to the organisation. In the previous manual system of obtaining customers’ feedback and complaints, it was tedious to keep track of the complaints and the follow-up. The customers had to personally visit the MM offices to verify the status of their complaints and outstanding issues. MM also could not ascertain the efficiency of the internal processes in solving the issues or feedback raised. Furthermore, some serious issues affecting health and safety could not be effectively followed through as there was no means of tracking or monitoring its effect. The concerned departments may be able to take immediate actions to rectify the situations if they were aware of the problems on the ground. In addition, these feedbacks cannot be effectively used to enhance or improve MM services as there was no system to log, document and follow-up the information. For a customer-centric organisation such as MM, customers’ satisfaction and feedback are essential measurement of the effectiveness and efficiency of their services. It mirrored the quality of work done by the organisation.

B. Strategic Approach

 2. What was the solution?
Being a customer-centric organisation, the MM vision is to “Attain the highest degree of excellence in providing services while preserving the cultural identity of the city.” The Muscat Contact Center embodies the essence of this vision. This holistic approach to empower customers to provide useful feedback facilitates the flow of services' information from customers to MM through various channels. Through direct communication with the customer, the programme becomes the conduit in which MM can monitor public comments at the same time evaluating the organisation's performance. The Business process for the Contact Center comprised the following support structures; 1st Line – Contact Center agents 2nd Line – Monitor and follow-up, sometimes solve the issues and close the case 3rd Line – Operational team, implement the solution. A Quality Assurance team is also established to monitor the customer satisfaction and quality of services provided. The whole concept of Muscat Contact Center focused on providing information to more than 1 million citizens and residents of Muscat Governorate (30% of Oman population) about MM services and gathering feedback and complaints from customers to achieve higher service. Other objectives in which MM wishes to achieve includes; i. Raising awareness, of MM services, and facilitates accessibility to these services. ii. Customer satisfaction by saving their time and effort through the use of modern technologies to access information and facilitate follow-up process rather than going to the MM’s offices for inquires or service requests. iii. Increase productivity of MM by increasing the productivity of MM employees through Saving their time and effort handling cases with the technology support. iv. Wealth of Data by providing information which forms an easy reference for both municipality and customer supported by accurate indicators and data. All these objectives can be achieved through the use of the following channels; a. Through 1 free phone number 1111, a customer can access via the IVR system to provide information and feedback on certain issues and lodged a complaint. They can speak directly to a qualified and trained agent , leave a voice mail, use the self service to follow the status of their complaints or get the procedures they would like to know about services’ procedures and direct the IVR system to send it to their email or fax. b. For customers who prefer using internet, they also can use the online form Complain and Suggestion in MM portal. c. MM accounts in Twitter, Facebook and YouTube are available for customers who prefer social networks. d. customers can also send their feedback and complain via emails at contactus@mm.gov.om e. Feedback and complains can be sent also via the electronic Fax to: 1111 that will be integrated directly to the email: contactus@mm.gov.om f. Tapping on the iMuscat application on smartphone platform, customers can send feedback and complaint, upload relevant pictures and also provide GPS data. g. customers can share their opinion about the service quality through MM Polls and Questionnaires available at MM web portal Since its implementation, a total of 42,375 feedback/complaints were received and 41,093 of which were resolved. This indicated that about 97% of the feedback and complaints were acted upon and resolved, bringing about improvement to the MM services and better customers’ satisfaction.

 3. How did the initiative solve the problem and improve people’s lives?
Muscat Contact Center 24/7 aims to improve communication with the customers, raising awareness which leads to achieve transparency and better productivity for MM as a customer-centric organization. Through Muscat Contact Center, MM is able to provide efficient services to its customers by : a. Improving Customers' access and choice of communication channels while lowering the cost of service and minimizing the time. b. Providing consistent responses and improve quality of information for higher customer satisfaction. c. Transparent follow-up procedure for all complains via problem/issues management system. d. Allowing early identification of customer service trouble spots and problem issues by analysing the incoming registered complaints. e. With the increasing popularity of social network sites, MM was quick to embrace this new trend by establishing its accounts on YouTube, Twitter and Facebook in 2011 which further facilitates open communication with the customers, leading to enhanced information discovery and better and prompt delivery of services with the beauty of the web2.0 tools like the RSS, BLOGS, Hashing and video sharing.

C. Execution and Implementation

 4. In which ways is the initiative creative and innovative?
2008- Preparation Committee - Assistant General Director of Information System- chairman of the committee and contact center manager as 2nd assistant to study all requirements to establish 1111 contact center and all related channels like social networks, email, mobile apps and ensure the quality of the provided services. 2009 – Business Process Re-engineering was conducted and implemented. Understanding that technology is only an enabler, the business process and workflow were the first area that MM looked into. There was a lot of inefficiency in the old process and workflow. Streamlining them and removal of unnecessary steps will lead to increase productivity. Bearing in mind that the initiative will be put in an online environment, these new sets of Business Process and Workflow will develop to cater for that. They were also tested in an off-line environment to ensure that it was practical in the actual environment and not just on paper. This is with the support of MM Chairman and executive management in all directorates. End of 2009 – Implementation of the Contact Center. The solution for the Contact Center was developed and implemented. The Contact Center is available 24/7. Contact Center website and services are available in Arabic and English. System backup process is established and documented based on pervasive technical infrastructure requirements. System virtualisation through Virtual Machine ware. Service Availability incidents are reported, escalated and resolved based on an incident management policy. This is managed and monitored regularly to ensure that the services are available 24 hours 7 days a week. 2011- Social networks were introduced. MM is aware of the major role that customers play in services development; thus, the Municipality sought to activate and enhance social network sites by launching its page on Twitter, Facebook and YouTube. Significant events such as Muscat Festival, Tour of Oman and Muscat fashion week are held annually. All important activities related to such events are managed, promoted and highlighted by means of social networks too and under Muscat Contact Center management. 2011- Mobile apps (i-Muscat) launched Tapping on the iMuscat application on smartphone platform, customers can send feedback and complaint and also provide GPS data to pinpoint the location of the complaint and upload relevant pictures. 2012- Official launched of Muscat Contact Center with marketing camping for the solution raising public awareness of the Muscat Contact Center services. 2013- Dedicated supportive offices /department had been established in each directorate under the General Manager office, for ensuring of high quality providing effective and fast follow up of the cases and Quick responds for customers' comments.

 5. Who implemented the initiative and what is the size of the population affected by this initiative?
The initiative was proposed by the MM through its effort in adopting Information Technology to streamline its operations and processes especially in its provision of services to the companies, other ministries organizations and the citizens. For the Contact Center, the Chairman of MM took a personal interest in it. Customers’ feedback is the conduit for improvement of municipal services provided by MM. There is a summary of feedback for each Directorate and live feedback to Chairman’s office which indicates the commitment of the Chairman and Executive Management to improve the customer services. A committee had been established to study and propose all the requirements and the latest standards solutions to be adapted by MM. Information technology management, contact center management, network team, internet team, programming team and two consultants from one of the call centers of the strongest service providers (oman mobile) in the semi-government organization in Oman were the members of this committee. Implementation of the solution had been done by external vendor with the supervision and the project management from MM committee. At the application level, the Contact Center application is integrated with: 1. CRM application of MM 2. SMS gateway of MM 3. Active Directory of MM 4. iMuscat Smartphone application of the vendors. Through such integration, MM spearhead the way for Integrated Government (iGovernment) in the Oman and the region. Therefore all the stakeholders, Executive Management, internal and external end-users and vendors are all involved in the design and implementation of the initiative.
 6. How was the strategy implemented and what resources were mobilized?
1) Financial cost of the system Contact center committee studied three different solutions and estimated the average project cost. The cost later had been approved from the tender committee at MM. MM invested initially about OMR 160k (USD 420k) including the implementation, maintenance and support for three years. Annual maintenance & support starting from 2015 of OMR 23k (USD ) 2) Technical Architecture The Contact Center is developed entirely on web-based technology. The content management refers to case management system which manages the complaints from the time it was registered and solved. The case management system provides vital data for knowledge management base for future development and improving. This information is accessible through the intranet system in MM. Sharepoint is also used as the common management point, which stores the service directory (the processes and procedures of the municipal services). This information is made available to the Contact Center Agents who have access on the updated processes and procedures for the related services. MM has put in extra consideration when deciding on the size of the hardware and software licenses for the Contact Center. In anticipation of growth, currently the Contact Center has a manning of 37 staffs. However, the system is scalable to more than 400 agents and the system can handle 30 calls concurrently. 3) Human Resource cost Internal Team – 2 Database Administrators, 16 Developers, 6 network engineers, 4 resources for eServices and a team of 5 personnel for the Helpdesk services which provide technical support for all MM IT services. Dedicated 2 developers and 2 network engineers are handling Muscat Contact Center technical issues.

 7. Who were the stakeholders involved in the design of the initiative and in its implementation?
Business Process Re-engineering of handling complaints. The business process and workflow were the first area that MM looked into. There was a lot of inefficiency in the old process and workflow. Streamlining them and removal of unnecessary steps will lead to increase productivity and transparency. Introducing complaint management solution That handles all complaints and customers feedback with several channels. Integrated with MM systems (CRM, SMS Gate way, Active directory, i-Muscat, and MM web portal) Providing the required information for the decision makers and all related history to any customer or any case. Faster and more effective Municipality Services- Since its implementation in Nov 2010, a total of 42k feedback/complaints was received and a total of 41k of which were resolved. This indicated that about 97% of the feedback and complaints are acted upon and resolved, bringing about improvement to the municipality servicers and better customers’ satisfaction. Better Customers’ Satisfaction – through several channels of communication, they can now provide feedbacks and track such feedback to improve the Municipal services. This is evident in the Customer Satisfaction between April to August 2013 which indicated that there is a 97%., high Level of customer satisfaction related to the contact center services. 1111 and social networks reaches and impressions MM has responded to more than 66,478 calls since Nov 2010. In addition, a total of 62,308 accounts reached MM's Twitter account and 194,314 impressions recorded from 28 October 2013 to 4 Nov 2013. Also MM account on Youtube managed to score 15,552 views, whereas the total of weekly reach on MM Facebook account since May 2013 has reached 121,073 and 644,285 impressions. For relevant events, Muscat Festival on Facebook had a Weekly Total reach of 392,473 during the period of 19/01/2013 and 31/03/2013. Tour Of Oman website had reached 67,490 unique visitors with 106,954 visits (1.58 visits/visitor) and around 13,261,882 hits. all these statistics clearly indicated that Muscat Municipality as a government body is very receptive of all comments, feedbacks and complaints.

 8. What were the most successful outputs and why was the initiative effective?
The Muscat Contact Center essentially collecting all the feedback and complaints from all customers in Muscat Governorate pertaining to all services provided in the governorate. Business process for the Contact Center comprised the following support structures; 1st Line – Contact Center agents 2nd Line – Monitor and follow-up, sometimes solve the issues and close the case 3rd Line – Operational team, implement the solution. Quality Assurance team which monitors customer satisfaction and quality of services provided. MM launched active public awareness campaigns through various channels to promote Muscat Contact Center 1111. This includes traditional media like newspaper & TV and new media channels like social networks. In addition, regular quality assurance check was also conducted on monthly basis to assess the efficiency of the programme and the level of customer satisfaction. This is done with the support of the contact center management, IT technical team and media and statistic department at MM. Monthly registered cases are randomly checked for quality assurance based on the softskill of 1st line who handled the case, time taken to solve the case and the quality of the service. Muscat contact center Policy is that no case is considered closed or resolved until the customer has confirmed so. Hence after resolving of cases, customers will be contacted to check on their satisfaction. Moreover, with each resolved case, there is SMS send out with quality assurance link, to get the detailed feedback of customers. In fact, one of the main channels of Talk to Muscat is Polls and Survey which is directed to enhance service level of quality. Also MM web portal conducts surveys in a regular basis to measure service quality and customer satisfaction. The social network analytic tools listed below are used by MM team to monitor interaction level and improve social network channels. a. http://awstats.sourceforge.net/ b. http://anatweet.com/report c. Facebook- Insights d. TweetReach e. https://www.youtube.com/analytics f. http://www.google.com/analytics/

 9. What were the main obstacles encountered and how were they overcome?
a. There was a lot of inefficiency in the old process and workflow. Streamlining them and removal of unnecessary steps led to increase productivity. The business process re-engineering steps eliminated inefficiency and geared the system towards an online G2C web environment. b. Involvement of external organization - There are instances in which other organizations have to be involved in resolving the complaints received. It is difficult for any customer to follow up his/her case with several entities, especially if they do not have a ticketing system or database to store such information. Hence, MM designed the Muscat Contact Center with a centralised ticketing system to make it easy to trace and retrieved information where the customer only needs to log the issues. In the improved version of this system, such issues will be immediately transferred to the related entities, and they will receive automatic update on their cases. This link to external organisations is currently under testing. c. Service requests - Muscat Contact Center received many requests to provide numerous customer services and these services require a form to be filled and attachments to be attached. To meet these requests, Talk To Muscat developed an application to receive some service requests which do not require any fees and will be published by the end of 2013. Other services which required identification will be studied closely with the new introduction of PKI by e-Transforming plan. d. Injaz Services - With more than 600 employees in MM acting as the third line – operational staff, it was a challenge to get the feedback of the cases status immediately, since most of the cases are on the field. To resolve this issue, MM introduced and developed Injaz services which is based on the SMS application. The Injaz service enabled these staff to send a specific format of reply to Talk To Muscat application and will be updated immediately in the relevant systems. In addition, MM is currently developing a mobile-based solution to integrate these services into Talk to Muscat infrastructure.

D. Impact and Sustainability

 10. What were the key benefits resulting from this initiative?
The Contact Center is a conduit to track service efficiency of the Municipality. In fact, MM adheres to the customer-centric philosophy which is embedded into its evaluation plan. The direct impacts are; a. Re-organizing of Muscat Municipality Organization Structure- To support a customer-centric vision, six new departments including support offices for the contact center were created in Muscat Municipality directorates to ensure that that all cases are resolved efficiently and effectively. b. Faster and more effective Municipality Services- By being able to resolve 97% of the feedback and complaints immediately, the Contact Center has brought about improvement to the municipality servicers and better customers’ satisfaction. The Contact Center system is also integrated to the rest of the systems in MM. The integrated system embodied the knowledge management principles critical to the sustenance of MM electronic services such as using accessible knowledge from outside sources such as stakeholders, customers, clients, etc, for example through the use of web-based portal, users experiences and comments can be recorded and retrieved to improve the system further. This includes embedding and string knowledge in business processes, products and services so that MM staff are able to review history and information expeditiously and accurately. Transferring and sharing knowledge throughout the organization; with shared databases and information system, sharing of knowledge is seamlessly done to save precious time for the users and shortened the application time. c. Better Customers’ Satisfaction – through several channels of communication, they can now provide feedbacks and track such feedback to improve the Municipal services. This is evident in the Customer Satisfaction from April to August 2013 which indicated that the 97%, high Level of customer satisfaction level related to contact center services. d. Wealth of data - The data mined on the customers’ feedbacks and complaints are vital quantifiable statistics that reflects the quality of services provided by MM. Such information provides avenues for MM to improve their municipal services and become the catalyst to transform MM to be a Learning Organisation, an organisation that facilitates the learning of its members and continuously transforms itself to improve its services. MM will be the model government organisation which successfully transformed itself to be a service-centric learning organisation. In fact many organizations have conducted field visits to benefit from MM systems such organization include Ministry of Health, ROP, Ministry of tourism, Ministry of man power. Some of these entities proposed to join their services to Muscat Contact Center management. For example the Ministry of tourism which provides services and information about Oman beautiful places, hotels, etc. This cooperation will increase Muscat Contact Center users' to cover tourism services all around the sultanate. Also, Dhofar Municipality with a population of 346,046 and Sohar municipality which serves around 140,000 are planning to use similar systems as MM is one of the best governmental organization in Oman and municipal services that any municipalities seeks to provide are similar. In addition, MM sent out a total of 2.4 million SMS notifications to customers since Nov 2010, as SMS is one of the widely used channels for immediate update and notify. There are more than 221k visitors to MM web portal using MM e-services and discovering the latest news about the Municipality. Additionally, MM has responded to more than 66,478 calls since Nov 2010. 62,308 accounts reached MM's Twitter account and 194,314 impressions recorded from 28 October 2013 to 4 Nov 2013. Also MM account on Youtube managed to score 15,552 views, whereas the total of weekly reach on MM Facebook account since May 2013 has reached 121,073 and 644,285 impressions. For relevant events, Muscat Festival on Facebook had a Weekly Total reach of 392,473 during the period of 19/01/2013 and 31/03/2013.Tour Of Oman website had reached 67,490 unique visitors with 106,954 visits (1.58 visits/visitor) and around 13,261,882 hits. Muscat Festival website had reached 46,607 unique visitors and around 4,079,688 hits The indirect impacts are; a. Prompt MM attention to address urgent issues raised by customers will improve business activities and better communication amongst the customers in the Governorate b. Due to easy feedback through the Contact Center, any discerning citizen and resident can provide feedback, thus making the Governorate clean, efficient and a desirable city which is a boost to tourism.

 11. Did the initiative improve integrity and/or accountability in public service? (If applicable)
Corporate Sustainability Through the Contact Center, information is disseminated to the various departments integrated via Muscat Municipality knowledge-based CRM system. The processes in integrating the feedback to operational services are the key in providing quality municipal services. Due to the shared nature of the system, all departments in MM would be able to retrieve relevant data and share knowledge and information. Through such integrated services, users’ interactions and experiences can be improved tremendously. Such processes are also sustainable and transferable to other municipalities and councils in Oman as long as they have the same municipal services. This strategy achieved corporate sustainability by developing the skills and competencies essential to ensure project sustainability. Political Sustainability Political sustainability cannot be achieved without participation from various stakeholders. Therefore, in the initial stage of project, many meetings were held with various stakeholders to achieve political sustainability and secured their buy-in. The Chairman personally reviewed the process worklflow to ensure its effectiveness and sustainability. The participation of all stakeholders enable MM to build a unify solution with a clear business process and workflow for all services in an integrated manner which enables the project to be politically sustainable for the future. Economic Sustainability A clear economic benefit is derived from this project as since its launch in November 2010 until Septemper 2013, the Contact Center received about 42k feedback/complaints and a total of 41K of which were resolved. This indicated that about 97% of the feedback and complaints are acted upon and resolved, bringing about improvement to the municipality servicers and better customers’ satisfaction. Thus increasing customers ‘satisfaction and also improved municipal services in Muscat Governorate, making it economically sustainable. Usability and revision Sustainability The successful implementation of the Contact Center in MM provides an impetus to other government organizations with customer-centric to install the same concept. Tender Board, Ministry of Tourism, Ministry of Manpower, Dhofar Municipality, Sohar Municipality, Manzoon Electricity and Ministry of Health had visited and expressed interest to adopt MM Contact Center model. Ecological Sustainability The successful usage and deployment of the Contact Center empowers the MM staff to provide quality services to the customers. Through the Contact Center, information is disseminated to the various departments integrated via MM knowledge-based CRM system. The processes in integrating the feedback to operational services are the key in providing quality municipal services. Due to the shared nature of the system, all departments in MM would be able to retrieve relevant data and share knowledge and information. Through such integrated services, users’ interactions and experiences can be improved tremendously. Such processes are also sustainable and transferable to other municipalities and councils in Oman as long as they have the same municipal services.

 12. Were special measures put in place to ensure that the initiative benefits women and girls and improves the situation of the poorest and most vulnerable? (If applicable)
Muscat Contact Center is a conduit to track service efficiency of the Municipality with efficient support from the Municipality chairman. In fact, MM adheres to the customer-centric philosophy which is embedded into its evaluation plan. it has helped MM to provide efficient and effective services, within the organization and to the customers with the following lessons learned: 1. Streamline the processes and removal of unnecessary steps leading to increase productivity. The business process re-engineering steps eliminated inefficiency and geared the system towards an online G2C web environment. This was documented in the users’ manual and internal workflow documents and is the most critical step before using technology to implement the whole process. 2. Complaint management system and the efficiency of using its data in order to improve the productivity lead to shared concept within MM departments for the internal issues. Through such integrated services, users’ interactions and experiences can be improved tremendously. Such processes are also sustainable and transferable to other municipalities and councils in Oman as long as they have the same municipal services. This strategy achieved corporate sustainability by developing the skills and competencies essential to ensure project sustainability. 3. Strong support and guidance from the Chairman and the Executive management. There is a summary of feedback for each Directorate and live feedback to Chairman’s office which indicates the commitment of the Chairman to improve the customer services. 4. Strong technical leadership and support from the IT Department is critical for the success of this initiative. 5. Engaging the customers’ right from the start is essential to ensure that their feedback, experiences and suggestions are factored into the revised process and embedded in the IT-based system. 6. One key of the success of the initiatives is the capability to continue with the growth of data. MM has launched new data center based on APC (Hot Containment System), with the good capability of cooling, Power, Racks and UPS that support any additions of hardware on 2013 to support MM applications scalability especially that As MM became a reference for other organization in Oman with the services that it provides, many organizations have conducted field visits to benefit from MM systems such organization include Ministry of Health, ROP, Ministry of tourism, Ministry of man power. Some of these entities proposed to join their services to Muscat Contact Center. For example the Ministry of tourism which provides services and information about Oman beautiful places, hotels, etc. This cooperation will cover tourism services all around the Sultanate. Also, Dhofar Municipality with a population of 346,046 and Sohar municipality which serves around 140,000 are planning to use similar systems as MM is one of the best governmental organization in Oman and municipal services that any municipalities seeks to provide are similar.

Contact Information

Institution Name:   Muscat Municipality
Institution Type:   Government Agency  
Contact Person:   Khadija Al-Yahmadi
Title:   Ms.  
Telephone/ Fax:   0096899021316
Institution's / Project's Website:  
E-mail:   9971@mm.gov.om  
Address:  
Postal Code:  
City:   Muscat
State/Province:  
Country:  

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