Alabama automates citizen interaction

With the volume of communications from citizens reaching the breaking point,

Alabama Gov. Don Siegelman's office turned to an automated system last month

to keep requests and complaints from falling through the cracks.

"We had no means of tracking constituent contact," said deputy press

secretary Janel Bell.

Now, instead of relying on sticky notes and to-do lists, members of

the governor's staff receive pop-up flags on their computer screens reminding

them to follow up on the tens of thousands of letters, e-mail messages,

phone calls and faxes they receive each week.

That's just one of the features available with Intranet Quorum, a citizen

relationship management software solution by ACS Desktop Solutions Inc.

Intranet Quorum is a Web-based system that tracks contact with citizens

and keeps a history of those interactions on a database. It integrates with

e-mail, major word processing programs and existing databases.

Calls and correspondence are logged into the system; a keyword search

generates a work assignment and routes a message to the appropriate employee.

Intranet Quorum also helps if, for example, a citizen calls to check on

the status of a complaint: The first call-taker can use the system to provide

an update right away.

"It's the Federal Express model of always tracking where anything is

at a given time," said Mark Searle, ACS' director for state and local market

development. "The primary value is that when the citizen hangs up the phone

or gets their response back...they feel like they've been treated as a very

important customer of government."

The ACS software is used extensively in the federal government, including

the White House. The Indianapolis mayor's office also will become an Intranet

Quorum user, ACS announced Dec. 6.