The Challenge
The City of North Vancouver’s (‘The City’) goal is to build a healthy and inclusive city where people come first, and where everyone has access to the resources they need to fulfill their potential. As part of this mission, the City re-engaged Propel Solutions to implement the proposed recommendations to improve its Business Licensing services following a successful Process and Technology Review in 2021. The purpose of the engagement was to assist the City with process alignment and installation of method changes and key performance indicators as well as to provide coaching to the departmental managers in order to deliver customer-centric processes for the residents of the City of North Vancouver.
The Objective
The engagement was delivered over seven weeks and included the following objectives:
Develop Future State Process Maps: Propel worked with the Business Licensing Team to develop “product types” of Business Licensing services, which simplified the application process with application milestones and statuses classified. In-person process mapping sessions were then conducted to define future-state processes for new applications, renewals, and unpaid licences. Additionally, Propel developed a Customer Journey map to document the user experience on the City’s online service centre “CityServe” to ensure future-state processes are positive and customer oriented.
Guided Implementation Support: Propel provided management coaching and developed an implementation plan and a variety of tools to support the installation of process and system improvements. Mock-ups for new application and renewal processing in CityServe were developed for the IT Department to assist with configuration of the application questionnaire in the system. In addition to developing an FAQ database, a service menu was created to identify the types of inquiries that would be handled by Customer Service and self-service options in CityServe. The tools developed allowed the City to improve their customer experience and simplify response times of inbound inquiries.
Install Management Toolkit: Propel developed a comprehensive Management Toolkit with Key Performance Indicators (KPI’s) to measure success on a daily, weekly, and monthly basis. Structured communication paths were established to create problem solving behaviours across the areas, allowing for continued improvements in service delivery to the residents of North Vancouver.
The Result
The Implementation Support Project provided the City with the redesigned processes and tools to successfully elevate the customer experience and improve the team’s productivity. Towards the end of the engagement, the Business Licensing team achieved a service level of 98% of customer inquiries being responded within the service level of 2 days. The installed process and system improvements serve to allow the City of North Vancouver to achieve its mission in becoming a people-first community and supporting business owners in fulfilling their potential.
