Municipality of Hastings Highlands, ON

Hasting Highlands is a Township located in the Northernmost portion of Hastings County. It has a base population of roughly 4000 residents, and this grows to exceed 10,000 during cottage season. Hastings Highlands needed a solution to deliver on high customer service standards for both full-time and seasonal residents, and also the large number of tourists that visit every year.

The Challenge

Hastings Highlands has made it a goal of their municipality to ensure high customer service standards. They want their citizens, and others who are around during the busy season, to feel like their voices are being heard.

Prior to adopting AccessE11, the system in use was inefficient, with reported issues not being tracked adequately. This resulted in customers being bounced around internally from staff member to staff member, leading to frustration and an overall lack of engagement from the community.

However, the municipality was dedicated to improving, and introduced a bylaw in 2020 that guaranteed a strong customer service culture. This aims to provide:

• A consistent and exceptional customer service experience
• Enhanced communications with customers and staff
• Reduced calls and inquiries being bounced around internally

But how to accomplish this?

Enter AccessE11

In October 2020, Hastings Highlands signed on with Access E11, and saw positive results immediately. Prior to adopting AccessE11, roughly 40-50 formal service requests were submitted to the town by residents in any given year. Since that time, Hastings has received and dealt with 1900 service requests from residents without an appreciable change in staffing levels. Departments are using the data the platform provides for resource allocation and time management, automated quarterly reports to council have improved budget planning, and public feedback on the timeliness and quality of service and the managed communications has provided excellent validation of the results.

Staff were also on board from day one. Every staff member includes a link to submit a service request as part of their email signature, and with one click from any email correspondence a citizen is brought straight to the proper web form to report their concern.

The ease of implementation and usage is something that stood out to both the staff and citizens of Hastings Highlands. The platform was incredibly easy to implement, and very user friendly for every staff member of any demographic (and any level of technical knowledge).

Even citizens who are not comfortable with computers can still raise issues in person or on the phone, with all relevant information immediately submitted to the system by a staff member for proper tracking and follow-up.

In their time partnered with AccessE11, Hastings Highlands has found that, ultimately, it has empowered citizens and stakeholders to take action in their community, which has led to increased engagement from the entire town.

AccessE11 has become an important aspect of municipal operations for the staff, residents, and tourists of Hastings Highlands.

Take a look at our webinar with guest speakers from Hastings Highlands: