SugarCRM, the world’s fastest-growing customer relationship management (CRM) company, today announced Ireland’s Local Government Management Agency (LGMA) is using SugarCRM software to support an online payment system for its household property tax.
The CRM project is part of a series of austerity measures to help the government cut costs and raise revenue. The LGMA division of the Irish government, which collects the new tax and provides customer service support for local authorities, selected SugarCRM because it is reliable and an economically viable solution to manage customer issues related to using the online payment system for the new tax.
Launched in January 2012, the property tax affects all Irish citizens with household incomes. SugarCRM tracks all correspondence received, system problems and issues reported by citizens and escalates them to the right local department within the LGMA. SugarCRM’s excellent reliability and performance has led to faster incident resolution times and greater independence for local operators.
Tim Willoughby, Director at the LGMA said, “We found SugarCRM does everything we thought it would do and more. It offers a cost-effective way of measuring and dealing with customer issues related to using the system for paying the tax. Our operators gain a complete customer view of a problem and can act swiftly to address issues without having to call in developers for support.”
Willoughby estimates that SugarCRM has saved local authorities up to six weeks of development time. “We have a good handle over our customer interactions,” he said.
SugarCRM gold partner Provident CRM was involved in the initial selection process and supported the project installation. The company was instrumental in showcasing the potential of SugarCRM and its advantages over other solutions. “SugarCRM met and surpassed all of the project’s requirements. It is a flexible, customisable and reliable product and very cost effective,” said John Malone, director of Provident CRM.
Due to the success of the project, the LGMA will be extending the use of SugarCRM to other business areas within the organisation later this year. For example, SugarCRM will be used for a new telephony integration, administrative support for an existing second home tax and the Protect Our Water tax.
SugarCRM will also assist in the official launch of the customer service website, ‘FixYourStreet,’ which helps citizens report problems such as potholes, broken streetlights, fly-tipping and graffiti to their local authority.
Jeff Campbell, VP worldwide mid-market and channel sales said, “The LGMA has seen the immense benefit of using our open source platform to drive down cost and improve customer relationship management. We hope that this success will inspire other governments across Europe to follow the same model to help them deal with the challenges facing their economies.”