Case Study: iConstituent Engagement Platform Streamlines Communication With Team Collaboration
Representative Frank Lucas’ office streamlined their office’s mail program and clarified the letter approval process, which improved teamwork and reduced turnaround time by more than half.
Team communication and collaboration has been difficult with social distancing and working from home. Gone are the days when staff and teams could quickly huddle to address complex issues. In today’s world, additional tools are needed to encourage and facilitate collaboration. Otherwise, it is too easy for staff to work in silos, with resulting degradation in the collective knowledge and the inability to solve complex issues together. Over the past year, iConstituent’s focus has been to facilitate collaboration in their platform to allow staff members to easily reach out and interact with coworkers, constituents, and external agencies.
Background
Alison Slagell, Deputy Chief of Staff in Representative Frank Lucas’ office, knows this very well. She looked to iConstituent as a partner to increase collaboration within the office and reduce inefficiencies within the correspondence approval process.
Much like other Hill offices Covid-19 disrupted the office’s traditional forms of communication. The staff could no longer meet face to face with constituents or sit down in person for staff meetings to discuss issues collectively. With staff working remotely, all communication, both internally and externally, was over phone, email, text, and video.
This new work environment placed an even greater value on increased collaboration, transparency, and efficiency within the office.
Enter iConstituent’s Constituent Engagement Platform (CEP). During Slagell’s training on iConstituent’s new platform, she was introduced to comments, which she realized would help with collaboration and could be used as part of the letter approval process.
Slagell streamlined the office’s mail program and introduced several reforms that reduced turnaround time by more than half. Slagell also introduced a clear letter approval process, using CEP’s comment feature to facilitate internal collaboration. According to Slagell
“Comments are very helpful in determining what needs to get done.”
Overall Outcomes:
The DC office is now utilizing CEP, and with its user-friendly interface, the Staff’s feedback has been impressive:
“With the redesign of the site, it’s wildly easier to use”
“The new iConstituent feels more like a tool that can be helpful and less like something they have to deal with.”
With staff logging calls and adding conversations in a central location constituent conversations are now more organized and available for review by all staff.
Operating during a global pandemic has forced each office to face a number of unique challenges but with iConstituent’s CEP, users can leverage the platform to help solve many of them. By using the newly redesigned system Slagell was able to better manage the office’s mail program and clarify the letter approval process, which improved teamwork and reduced turnaround time by more than half. These improvements cascaded into additional improvements for other areas, with Legislative Assistants becoming more engaged in the process and Staff Assistants being able to move faster with rapid feedback. Things just keep getting better.
Hear From Our Partners
“iConstituent has made it possible for me to stay in touch with my constituents during COVID-19 by providing constituent outreach tools. Without in-person events or townhalls, the texting and telephone townhalls have been invaluable and run so effectively by the iConstituent support staff.”
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