Council puts customers first with new digital platform

Tewkesbury Borough Council is set to transform the way it interacts with its customers online following its decision to sign up with new digital platform Liberty Create.  

In line with its corporate priorities, the borough council has been searching for the right digital platform for some months. It was important that this investment would make customers’ lives easier, simplify the processes behind its services, and save money.  

Customers can already interact with the council online for many of its services. These include reporting a missed bin, signing up for garden waste services, paying council tax and making a complaint about noise. 

However, Tewkesbury has now joined forces with Netcall to implement its Liberty Create low-code platform to increase, reshape and improve the range of online services on offer. This new digital platform is incredibly flexible and enables the council to provide end-to-end processes with automated service communications to residents at an impressive speed. 

Crucially, thanks to the flexibility of the new platform, the transformation of the council’s online services will be done by a team focused on real customer needs – rather than being limited to what will work within the platform.  

The first phase of the project will be to redesign and transfer the current online services, and then to add bulky collections and paperless council tax billing within the first year.  

Cllr Mike Dean, Lead Member for Customer Focus, Tewkesbury Borough Council, said: “This is an exciting step forward for Tewkesbury Borough Council, and one which will have a direct impact on our customers’ experience with us. Fewer people are engaging with us over the phone or in person, so investing in our online services makes sense”. 

“Liberty Create will allow us to offer residents a much slicker, faster and improved online experience – and our online services will be customer focused; it’s not about what works for the council, but what works for our residents and businesses. We will be using the best mapping technology, combined with useful automated communications, and simpler processes to make our online services the best around.” 

Mark Holmes, Chief Sales Officer, Netcall, said: “We are delighted to welcome Tewkesbury Borough Council as a Liberty Create user. It is joining a vibrant and responsive local digital community that works together to share knowledge and applications. Our customers have already contributed 11 amazing COVID-19 related apps for others to download free of charge.” 

Mark continues, “We want to support councils to upskill their valuable teams, which is why we currently provide free Liberty Create e-learning. It’s all about rapid flexible process change using the teams that really know what customers need.”