May 12, 2003
Sapporo City Government Goes Live with Onyx Powered Call Center
Sapporo City, Former Site of Winter Olympics, Uses Onyx for eCitizen Initiative in City Hall Call Center and Sees First Call Resolutions Jump to 95%
BELLEVUE, Wash. - Onyx® Software Corporation (NASDAQ: ONXS), worldwide leader in customer relationship management (CRM), today announced that Sapporo City, former site of the 1972 Winter Olympics in Japan has gone live with Onyx Employee Portal (OEP) to support its eCitizen Initiative. Sapporo City Hall is using Onyx at its main call center to improve overall service by proactively distributing information and more effectively responding to the needs of its citizens. The Onyx implementation has already allowed Sapporo City to assimilate information from multiple sources and streamline processes at the call center to better close the information gap for its citizens that do not have Internet access.
Sapporo has a population of 1,850,000 citizens and is a special designated city by the Federal Government of Japan entitling the city to special self-governing authority. In 2001, Sapporo City established the formal "Sapporo IT Operational Strategy," a customer-centric initiative, and the creation of a new call center at Sapporo City Hall was one of the results. In April of 2002, CRM was deemed to be one of the key technologies and Onyx was ultimately selected as the technology of choice for this critical call center project.
"With this call center, we believe that we can reduce the average cost per call by over 33%. We have already seen increased call resolution efficiencies and we firmly believe that we can improve Sapporo City efficiency by leveraging the call center." Said Mr. Kenji Kitagawa CRM Group Manager of Sapporo City's Planning Authority, IT Department. "Overall, we have been very impressed with how easy Onyx is to implement, customize and integrate making it an extremely cost-effective solution to help us achieve our eCitizen customer satisfaction goals."
Onyx has helped Sapporo City solve some of its biggest customer service issues. Prior to implementing Onyx, call center staff had difficulty accessing the necessary information, customer interactions weren't recorded for future reference, and citizens were often forwarded from department to department in an effort to resolve their issues. Onyx has provided a centralized repository of citizen information that has helped resolve many of these internal problems.
All customer interactions occurring within the Sapporo City call center are now recorded in Onyx and integrated with its knowledge database. This enables the Sapporo City call center staff to quickly provide more accurate, relevant information, and improve their resolution rates and overall efficiency. Sapporo is also tracking and analyzing the information gathered from customer interactions to identify trends, call volumes to gauge staffing resources, and other areas of improved customer satisfaction. As a result, first call resolutions rates have reached 95%, and Onyx scored a 9.4 on a scale of 1 to 10 in an end-user satisfaction questionnaire that was distributed internally to the call center staff.
"We are seeing that governments in many parts of the world are beginning to view their citizens more as customers," said Brent Frei, CEO and co-founder of Onyx Software. "Traditionally governments have utilized technology to cut costs, now there is a shift towards using technology to establish better citizen relationships. In addition to making government information and services available online, governments are adopting CRM software to better understand citizens' needs so they can proactively provide services to the right people."
Onyx offers CRM solutions specifically for governments to access aggregated constituent data, and provides tools for governments to efficiently manage multi-channel constituent interactions, streamline internal operations between departments and across agencies, and enhance service levels for both citizens and businesses.
About Onyx Software
Onyx Software Corp. (Nasdaq: ONXS), worldwide leader in delivering successful CRM, offers a fast, cost-effective, usable solution that shares critical information among employees, customers and partners through three role-specific, Web services-based portals. The Onyx approach delivers real-world success by aligning CRM technology with business objectives, strategies and processes. Companies rely on Onyx across multiple departments to create a superior customer experience and a profitable bottom line. Onyx serves customers worldwide in a variety of industries, including financial services, healthcare, high technology and the public sector. Customers include Amway, United Kingdom lottery operator Camelot, Delta Dental Plans of California, Microsoft Corporation, Mellon Financial Corporation, The Regence Group, State Street Corporation and Suncorp. More information can be found at (888) ASK-ONYX or info@onyx.com.
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Bob Craig
Onyx Software
617-314-6846 |
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Telephone: +44 (0) 1344 322 199
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Director, Professional Services
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