Netfor’s work with the Indiana Secretary of State Office began in 2016. The relationship originated with Netfor serving as a consultant to Chief of Staff and Deputy Secretary of State Brandon Clifton to vision a call center for INBiz, a nationally-recognized one-stop business portal serving as Indiana businesses’ single point of contact for registration, filing, reporting, and making payments across state agencies.
With Netfor bringing industry standards to assist customer service relations between the office and its constituents, the Secretary of State grew the relationship with Netfor, allowing Netfor to implement its call center best practices in the office of Indiana’s chief clerk.
NEED
In 2016, the Indiana Secretary of State Office needed to scale its call center to support the INBiz portal.
There were no call center best practices and very few documentable processes, leading to the inability of the office to track and report calls as well as the internal staff being bogged down with the high volume of calls.
At the time, Indiana Secretary of State Connie Lawson was working to modernize the way the state does business by creating INBiz. This enormous endeavor coupled with the existing call volume coming into the Secretary of State led to an urgent need for more support, more organization, and more knowledge of how to streamline a call center for productivity and efficiency.
SOLUTION
Netfor partnered with the SOS team to flesh out the vision for INBiz and design a solution, with Netfor becoming that single point of contact for all constituent questions to the Secretary of State Office regarding INBiz and business processes.
Netfor began taking calls when INBiz services went live in April 2016, and the program has a multi-year roadmap that will continue to add services from both state and local agencies.
Netfor introduced its service management portal to the office staff, a tool that helped determine what the office’s call traffic was and kept a record of every transaction made during calls received. It became an essential tool to the office’s work management system.
The Netfor system provided call management reliability and consistency to the Secretary of State Office. Netfor used its knowledge base (KB), a fully-managed system for each of its clients that brings the best practices for how to answer different call types and documents them in a shareable database. It guarantees the exact same great customer service experience to the end user each and every time.
Netfor also provided guidance on workforce management, helping the Secretary of State Office determine how to best utilize its internal customer service staff — what hours and how many hours to work — to maximize efficiency and productivity.
RESULTS
Netfor continues to be a critically important partner to the Indiana Secretary of State Office, bringing its experience to the table to support the businesses operating in the State of Indiana.
Netfor provides a professional customer service desk built on best practices with a dedicated call management system offering 24/7/365 support.
Netfor is the single point of contact for all Secretary of State calls and questions, including those questions regarding the INBiz portal. Netfor answers calls in less than 20 seconds and resolves 95% of constituent issues on the first interaction.
Because of its successful partnership with the Indiana Secretary of State, Netfor was invited to attend the annual conference for the International Association of Commercial Administrators (IACA), which opened the door for Netfor leadership to connect with other secretary of state offices, including those in Iowa, West Virginia, North Carolina and Tennessee, for possible future collaboration.