Info@hackney

Research findings

Introduction

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The info@ hackney mailbox is located on the contact us web page of the website and is meant to be used by residents who have general enquiries. However it is used for more than just general enquiries. Residents also use this route to carry out tasks which they could have carried out using our online services. Management believe it is an inefficient service and are thinking of shutting it down.

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Who are the users?

There are different categories of users that will interact with the general enquiries mailbox. These include:

• Customer services agents that deal with enquiries.
• Residents of other boroughs making enquiries;
• Hackney residents who make enquiries;

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Hackney residents

• 40% black and ethnic minority,
• 20% being Black or Black British
• 36% are White British
• 16% being other White
• 7% Charedi Jewish people 4.5% Turkish
• 25% under 20
• 23% aged between 20-29 years old
• 44% aged between 30 - 55
• 18% People aged over 55
• 14.6% reported that they were disabled or that they experienced long-term limiting illnesses

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Hackney is a diverse borough with a population of 280,900, and at least 89 different languages are spoken.

What we want to find out

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• What are the problems with the current system?
• Why are residents emailing instead of using our online services?
• What are the opportunities for digital?

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What we did

• We carried out 4 in depth interviews with advisors
• We analysed emails received from residents
• We put a link to a questionnaire on the contact us page and in the automated response of the info@hackney mailbox
• We sent out questionnaires to residents who have emailed the info@hackney mailbox.

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docs.google.com/document/d/1h1ka_Miij5uW-w_JHrvKtWGPdnlEKIcyLYrhUZk4rvo/edit?usp=sharing

What we found out so far:

E-mail analysis of all enquiries

Analysis of email requests processed by advisors

Categories of requests processed

Breakdown of information request

Breakdown of system issues

Breakdown of update request

What we found out so far:

Interviews with Customer services agents

1. It’s very time consuming for customer service agents reviewing the emails, due to the large number of emails received. A large amount of these are junk emails
2. Reporting is a manual process.
3. We receive emails for other services that do not support email and so agents do a lot of sign posting
4. Residents repeatedly email info@hackney mailbox
1. Because they are unable to find what they are looking for
2. Asking queries that are tasks they can carry out themselves using online services on the Hackney council website
3. They are not confident that they will get a response from the contact details they have, so they email general enquiries also

It’s very time consuming for people reviewing the emails due to the large number of emails received.

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it's like a never ending service

Scrap emails are like adverts and we get quite a lot of those.

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It's a really busy inbox

If we've got 100 emails i’d say 25 to 30 might be scrap

We receive emails for other services that do not support email and so agents do a lot of sign posting

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We don't accept parking appeals by email but people still send appeals by email.

People often struggled navigating our website to getting where they need to go

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Residents repeatedly email the info@hackney mailbox for queries which they are able to carry out themselves using the online services

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Even though they got a number for that team to call they keep coming back to us

we just keep repeating ourselves

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we tell the customers you can do this yourself but they still ignore you

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Reporting is a manual process

how many we forwarded to other departments

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a total of the emails completed

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how many are outstanding in each of the inboxes,

how many we logged and reapplied to ourselves

we give an account of emails that are over the 2 working days

The date of the oldest email outstanding

What we found out so far:

Interviews with residents

1. Residents prefer to contact the council by phone and email ​
2. Web forms, web chat and social media wasn’t very popular ​
3. Residents believe that they are unable to carry out their requests online​
4. There are mixed opinions about the service received.

What we found out so far:

Resident questionnaire

How might we statements

How might we reduce the number of unnecessary emails received

• Block junk email addresses

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How might we reduce the number of emails received by customer services agents which are for other services

• Template / automated response
• Web form
• Chat bot
• Artificial intelligence
• Directory of services
• Keep residents updated with regards to the progress of their applications
• Redesign home page and contact us page
• Update the relevant pages with the information that residents are asking for
• Add more functionality to the waste and parking systems

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How might we statements continued

How might we help residents to find what they are looking for

• Redesign home page and contact us page
• Update the relevant pages with the information that residents are asking for

How might we get residents to use the online services

• Support residents instead of carrying out tasks on their behalf

How might we make the reporting process less manual

• Implement Zendesk call handling software

Short term recommendations

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• Block junk email addresses​
• Update Contact us page using best practice recommendations​
• Stop carrying out tasks for residents ​
• Ensure report a problem issues go directly to the correct service area​
• ​Remove email address from other locations so that people find it on the contact us page
1. remove from our twitter, facebook and instagram pages where we have thousands of followers
2. Review and consider removing from contact blocks used on popular service web pages such as libraries and waste and recycling pages
• Set customer expectations when emailing us - as well as including an expected response time on the contact us page, we can add an automated response to the email inbox to let people know what will happen next
• Usability testing to understand how residents find contact details on our website

Mid and long term recommendations

�Mid term recommendations​

• Think about how we keep residents updated ​
• Improve Parking and Waste processes​
• Consider solutions that can automate reporting, for example Zendesk​
• Consider webchat as a contact option�​

Long term recommendations​

• Explore a short “Send us a message” form as a contact option
• Invest in a better website information architecture and content usability so that answers to customers’ main questions are easy to find and easy to understand