City of Misato
Public Office, Municipalities, and Education CC
Implemented SMS (Short Message Service) to Misato City, Saitama Prefecture
Improved delivery rate of important notices to citizens by implementing SMS (Short Message Service)
Challenge
To contact with tax delinquents not able to receive important notification through phone calls
Benefits
- Business efficiency and operational cost reduction
- Improved rate of tax payments such as city taxes
- The open rate for short messages is over 90%
Realize cost reduction and improvement of administrative services through implementing SMS service
Since 2013, Misato City has entrusted call center operations to transcosmos for tax payment collection and has worked to improve the collection rate for the current year.However, reviewing administrative costs was an important issue even at the city tax collection level.On this time, we have received a proposal for SMS from transcosmos. Through multiple discussions to address cost issues and usefulness of SMS, we have finally started full-scale operations as of July 2018.
By adding SMS in addition to calling for payment by phone, SMS messaging has reduced the number of call operations, and associated operational costs, by eliminating the necessity of repeat calls. In addition, delivering notices to the target citizens by SMS is very effective and has improved payment rate drastically. Because of high transmission accuracy, the number of operations have been reduced and has improved efficiency in overall operations. Thus, the quality of administrative services is improved drastically. We are expecting a great advancement from transcosmos.
Mr. Hitoshi Kimura
Finance Department
Storage Management Division Manager
City of Misato
Implementation of Short Message Service
Misato City is located in the southeastern part of Saitama Prefecture. They have been challenged with reducing the number of delinquent payments such as taxes (more than 30 days overdue) through traditional collection calls.They are experiencing challenges when calling citizens to deliver important notices because many are not available during the day or they do not answer unknown numbers.Consequently, the increase of man-hours required for conducting calls led to an increase in personnel expenses.
In order to solve the problem, transcosmos has implemented SMS* to support delivering their notices more securely and cost-effectively.
The services comprehensively cover from implementation (e.g.construction of business design and operation system) to operations (e.g. SMS operations).
*Using “Acrylate SMS,” Acute SMS Delivery Platform Service
Actualized both cost reduction (from such operations as call, shipping, and postage) and tax payment rate increase
Traditionally, Misato would call a delinquent payer twice. If still unanswered, a third call would be made. To become more efficient, transcosmos has implemented SMS.
When communicating by phone, it was necessary to speak with the person directly to obtain payment. With SMS, a push notification will appear on a smartphone standby screen, thereby increasing message open rate to over 90% and dramatically increasing the number of paid citizens.
Furthermore, it drastically reduced the cost of personnel expense and outsourcing expense, due to the decrease in required number of man-hours from the call operations.
Optimize communication channel between government and citizens
Improvement of operational efficiency, cost reduction, and improvement of administrative services are a common issue in local governments. Also, flexible response to administrative services is required in accordance with the civic living change.
transcosmos will continue to support the improvement of administrative services in Misato City. The Company will also contribute to the optimization of administrative and citizen communication through SMS.
Service provided to Misato City
