Illinois smart city association runs safe-service technology pilot in library

The Illinois Smart City and Region Association (ISCRA) is launching a pilot programme with FrontDesk Queue Management Systems and the Caseyville Illinois Public Library District to increase safety during Covid-19.

The six-month pilot will provide contactless service via FrontDesk’s innovative technology and also aims to optimise efficiency, reduce employee stress, and result in safe service and satisfied customers.

Controlling customer flow

FrontDesk’s technology allows for full control of customer flow by allowing customers to book reservations online, choose their service, answer questions, choosing date/time and receiving text confirmations.

Allowing customers to check-in upon arrival via a smartphone and wait until they are called to head in eliminates wait times and discards the need for a waiting area and ensures social distancing during Covid-19.

"Residents can choose to schedule to meet with a librarian for resume assistance, make an appointment with a tutor or social worker, or even schedule license plate renewals,” said Ashley Stewart, library director of the Caseyville Public Library District. “The platform is available in multiple languages, encouraging all members of the community to utilise the resources and services that are available to them.

“The Caseyville Public Library is now able to offer services more efficiently while maintaining the health and safety of the staff and community. Libraries strive to meet the evolving needs of diverse communities and this partnership with FrontDesk and ISCRA allows us to do that.”

“The platform is available in multiple languages, encouraging all members of the community to utilise the resources and services that are available to them”

In addition to touchless services, the Caseyville Library will be eventually adding various county and state services such as licensing programmes. Considering Illinois has nearly 7,000 local government units, this new technology has the ability to consolidate them and create improved customer experience. Instead of having to go to multiple government offices for marriage certificates, driver licenses and others the citizen would be enabled to perform these all in one place.

FrontDesk was recently implemented at City Hall in Mississauga, a suburb of Toronto, to manage interactions with thousands of residents for a full range of services, information, transactions, appointments, and enquiries.

After implementing FrontDesk, customer experience was reportedly extremely positive. Locations all over the city using FrontDesk have an average waiting time of less than a minute, the library reports. This means, citizens are helped before their actual reservation highly improving the citizen and staff satisfaction.

“Cities and organisations all over Europe and North America have incorporated our services and the benefits are instant. Citizen satisfaction with public services are heavily determined by the wait time. With FrontDesk, you eliminate the wait time leaving highly satisfied citizens in return. All implementations are handled in one day and the results can be seen the following day,” added FrontDesk CEO, Lasse Rydberg.

ISCRA is an educational non-profit whose mission is to connect, collaborate, and educate all Illinois municipalities with new technology to increase revenues, generate savings, and increase the health, safety and welfare of all citizens.

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