A major concern for many local governments and councils is keeping a well-maintained and safe city for communities to enjoy. This is certainly the case for the City of Oak Hill, Tennessee, whose highly engaged residents strive to keep their city looking and functioning at a proficient level.
Because of their civic-minded constituents, the City of Oak Hill receives a high volume of maintenance requests they need to address in near real-time. These include reports of potholes, graffiti, issues with trash collection, and by-products of weather-related events.
Unfortunately, with an outdated and paperwork-heavy system, fulfilling these requests wasn’t a seamless process - and many reports came in from different sources. This created a trust breakdown between the Oak Hill government and their community, as residents started to doubt whether they were being heard.
The City of Oak Hill was in great need of a seamless, automated, and efficient communication system to resolve this breakdown. That’s where Whispir came in - by helping Oak Hill create a simple SMS reporting tool for citizens.
How Whispir is helping ease the burden for Oak Hill
Oak Hill needed to simplify the maintenance request process; for residents submitting reports, the operational team handling them, and the contractors carrying out the work. Whispir is now being used to help with all three of these groups.
Residents:
Residents can use the reporting software to easily report issues through a text, using one keyword - for example, “pothole” - rather than having to go through a laborious process or navigate different tools.
An automated web form is then sent to them, asking them to submit a photo and some basic details - providing peace of mind that action will be taken.
Oak Hill operational staff:
Oak Hill operational staff can easily track all reported issues within the Whispir platform via a simple user interface.
This reporting solution has rapidly sped up processes, with a reduction in paperwork and burden on call center staff.
Contractors:
Whispir streamlines the process of getting to the maintenance crews on the ground - even helping to provide visual representations.
Contractors can also easily log when repairs and maintenance have been completed, giving Oak Hill valuable insights into response times and more.
A trigger to start the invoicing and payment process is also handled through the Whispir platform, streamlining the entire end-to-end journey.
"Whispir’s onboarding process was simple and fast. The ability to customize the platform to our needs, automating communication by combining SMS, web forms, and email was perfect. The new approach saves the Oak Hill team a lot of time and our citizens now have an easy, low-touch way to report issues and know their requests will be taken care of."
- Travis Mortimer, City Manager, Oak Hill
Additional Whispir features
Local governments can leverage Whispir's data analytics to continuously refine and improve their citizen communications.
Whispir's message builder utilizes artificial intelligence to help time-constrained teams create outreach that is on-target.
As an omnichannel platform, agencies with limited budgets can consolidate different systems for communication under one platform.
To learn more about the Whispir platform and how it can help streamline your communications, get in contact with our team or download our full case study on Oak Hill.
