HIGHLIGHTS

• In partnership with the City of Cape Town Customer Relations Department, we applied a behavioral science lens to identify ways to support call center agents to associate service requests with the correct category and location.
• Our work suggests that low-cost behavioral interventions can improve request intake and responsiveness to constituents’ requests.

The Challenge

A city’s ability to effectively and efficiently respond to citizens’ needs depends on properly capturing requests. Improperly organized requests can cause delays in resolution, waste municipal resources, and create tension between departments. 

In partnership with the City of Cape Town Customer Relations Department, we applied a behavioral science lens to identify ways to support call center agents to associate service requests with the correct category and location.

Our Approach

We conducted research to identify behavioral barriers to more accurate capture of requests by call center agents. We interviewed agents and supervisors and observed their work environment, uncovering four key insights about behavioral barriers to correctly capturing requests. 

1. Call center agents often rush request capture to preserve their break time. 
2. Agents have to multitask while taking calls, which can lead to errors and omissions in request capture.
3. Agents often rely on their own heuristics to identify request location and category, which can be inconsistent and occasionally faulty.
4. Agents prioritize soft skills over accurate request capture, as they are primarily assessed on their customer service skills rather than their request capture accuracy.

We identified design ideas to help call center agents capture complete and correct information about requests. These ideas include allocating specific break time, improving platform usability, conducting workshops, and developing a feedback system. These interventions address barriers such as rushing, multitasking, faulty heuristics, and a lack of feedback. Given the limited scope of our engagement, we did not implement and test these design ideas. 

Takeaway

Our work with the City of Cape Town call center suggests that the effectiveness of request-submission technologies could be enhanced through a better understanding of the way context affects the behavior of users. Low-cost behavioral interventions could improve request intake and, ultimately, responsiveness to constituents’ requests.

Interested in learning more about this work applying behavioral science to a crucial social problem? Reach out to us at info@ideas42.org or tweet at @ideas42 to join the conversation.