Baldwin County, Alabama, located along the shores of the Gulf of Mexico and Mobile Bay, has
a population of over 200,000 residents as of the 2020 Census and is in the top 10 fastest growing
metropolitan areas in the United States. Ten years older than the State of Alabama, Baldwin County remains Alabama’s largest county, covering over 1,600 square miles.
The mission of the Baldwin County Commission is to provide customer focused services to people who live, work and visit Baldwin County so they can enjoy a safe and thriving community and experience our unique heritage and natural resources. The Citizen Service Center offers services ranging from assisting callers and providing information for our courts and probate to waste management, parks and recreation and building permits.
Baldwin County have been using Universal Knowledge from Knowledge Powered Solutions
(KPS), for over 13 years, having initially implemented the KPS solution as part of a wider CRM rollout. Now in its 14th successful year, Baldwin County Commission recently upgraded to the KPS flagship Knowledge Management Solutions (KMS), which provides a highly configurable interface and additional collaboration features.
Customer Service Advisors use the KMS to provide advice and guidance to citizens, businesses and visitors using a wide variety of content types including information from the Baldwin County
Commission website, Knowledge Items directly authored and managed within the KMS, uploaded
documents and decision trees. The KMS provides a single unified platform for advisors to access all required information, using advanced search and browse capabilities.
Decision Trees are used to map complex processes for court proceedings, social service agencies, and license applications to name but a few and are widely used by advisors to quickly step through a set of questions and answers in a simplified manner. The Baldwin County Commission also widely use the collaboration features of Universal Knowledge. From hot topics to required
reading notifications, the KMS provides a dashboard view to advisors of the most important information they are required to be aware of, including any requests for changes or additions to the KMS.
Baldwin County’s ‘How Do I?’ section on their website is powered by Universal Knowledge.
A citizen can simply ask their question using natural language and Universal Knowledge will
return the most relevant results. This benefits the citizen by quickly providing the correct
information and benefits the contact centre, as they are able to both see which questions
are being asked via their self-service portal and whether they are being resolved by the
knowledge base.
It is the flexibility of the design of the KMS which makes the process of providing information to citizens so simple, with the ability to segregate information for internal and external use, with a single article being managed at the backend as each section of a Knowledge Item can have different rights and roles assigned.
‘In emergency situations the KPS KM tool is vital for our operations. When we experienced major hurricanes in 2020, we had to rotate staff in from other departments to support our 24/7 operations. The KPS KM tool is intuitive and these staff members, previously not used to the KMS were able to provide critical information to citizens without delay. Had we not had the KPS KM tool at the time, I’m really not sure how we would have coped with the demand’
‘KPS is a very responsive supplier who works closely with us to ensure the KMS meets our needs today and in the future’
Shannon Spivey
Customer Relationship Manager at Baldwin County Commission