How to address your customers

The NLPG is proving an invaluable framework for High Peak Borough Council’s customer service call centre. ‘Call High Peak’ was established in Spring 2003 and, on average, receives 275 calls a day. ‘Each call received by the centre relates to a specific property,’ explains Janet Dickinson, Centre Manager, ‘so it is vital that we have a framework for standardising our address data. Because the NLPG is built to British Standard BS7666, it provides an ideal framework for CRM applications.’ As a result, the CRM system that underpins the call centre uses the LLPG as its address data layer.

The council has already linked a number of its systems to Call High Peak such as environmental health, council tax, non-domestic rates and housing as well as over 30 per cent of other council services – and the linking of remaining systems is ongoing.

LLPG access for staff on intranet

Like many other councils in England and Wales, High Peak has spread the benefits of the NLPG across the authority by providing staff and councillors with full intranet access to the gazetteer. The LLPG’s addresses can be viewed alongside mapping, ward, parish information and planning data. This means that staff can process an online address search and bring back property-specific information linked to the electoral roll, to councillors, and to planning applications.

For Councillor Ray Atkins, Executive Member for ICT Strategy, one of the key benefits of using the LLPG in this way is the currency of the data:

"The value of our LLPG is that it provides up-to-date addresses and, in particular, new properties that are added to the LLPG as soon as they have been given an address by street naming and numbering. In the past, new properties did not appear on the geographic information system for several months. Providing access to the LLPG on our corporate intranet with mapping has also been particularly useful when staff need to visit properties, in particular those that are isolated or rural and are difficult to find."