FixMyStreet for Councils delivers cost savings—and that’s a fact.

Oxfordshire County Council installed FixMyStreet as their fault-reporting system in March 2013. Like every council, they were keen to see reductions in their expenditure, and were hopeful that FixMyStreet would help them in their aim to shift problem-reporting online.

We’re delighted to hear that, two years on, those benefits are tangible. Not only can they demonstrate a cut in call handling times, but they can also put a figure on just how much they have saved.

Tim White, Oxfordshire’s Service Improvement Lead in the Customer Service centre, says:

FixMyStreet has reduced the average handling time of our calls from nearly four minutes to around two minutes.

Robert Hill, Oxfordshire’s Web Services Manager, puts a figure on the savings, reckoning that the reduced time logging faults equates to £16,047.60 a year in staff costs.

But that’s just a small proportion of the reductions they could be looking at. Oxfordshire chose not to opt for full back-end integration at the time of install, but it is something they are now considering:

“By moving to an end to end system provided by FixMyStreet we would be able to remove additional cost by eliminating the need to inspect reports that meet certain criteria and passing them straight through for repair.”

mySociety’s agile approach has worked well for Oxfordshire. Tim White continued:

“Working with My Society has been a refreshing experience.

“They are very open to making changes to the way that the product works in order to improve both the customer experience and the experience for council employees.

“Using an agile approach to development means that we are able to get changes made quickly and incrementally, making the council more responsive to the demands of our residents.”

If you’d like to see a drop in your own call-handling times, and the associated cost benefits, take a look at FixMyStreet for Councils.

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Image: David Howard (CC)