According to recent analysis of the issue at FutureGov, the Seoul Metropolitan Government contact center has an extremely high customer satisfaction rate of 95.7 percent.
This data comes straight from Michael Ahn, an assistant professor in the Department of Public Policy and Public Affairs at the McCormack Graduate School. He wrote in a blog post for the Brookings Institution that the government was able to raise its satisfaction rate from 41.6 percent in 2006 to 95.7 percent in 2012.
It completed this dramatic increase by changing up the way it offered service to its callers. Before it created the Dasan 120 call center in 2007, the government operated 69 separate information centers that covered 41 government organizations. Following its creation, however, all those information centers were consolidated into a single service and programs hub where "over 500 call centre operators receive direct phone calls from citizens at every hour of the day and 365 days a year," Ahn wrote.
Part of this transition included the integration of modern call center technology that helps government representatives answer questions with the help of a database. The Dasan 120 center logs customer questions and their answers, and representatives can search through that information to help answer current questions. Many times, they need the same information several times over, and that repetition can provide callers with quick results. Ahn addresses this issue as well:
"Before Dasan 120, it took 70 minutes on average for citizens to identify and reach the relevant government department and officials, but now, 96.6 percent of calls to the centre are answered within the first 15 seconds," Ahn stated. In addition, 87.5 percent of representatives can answer callers' questions without transferring them to additional staff.
The call center takes advantage of voice and video chat, text messaging, and social media. It even reaches out to the hearing impaired with representatives who can communicate with sign language through video chat.
Edited by Adam Brandt