Lee County a social media butterfly

Web sites allow county to chat, tweet and blog with citizens

One visit to Lee County's Facebook page reveals a county that believes in providing exceptional service and a platform for civic engagement for its citizens.

Lee County's Facebook page includes a Petfinder application that synchs to the county's database of adoptable pets.

Lee County Tax Director Dwane Brinson says Lee County has developed a new, comprehensive social media program called Lee Linked. After Brinson sold the idea of Lee Linked to County Manager John Crumpton and the Lee County Board of Commissioners, it was off to the races.

Brinson said the first step was to develop a social media committee that would build a business plan and set goals for the initiative. The Information Technology Department established a group e-mail address for the social media committee to easily communicate with each other, and this e-mail address was used to set up the county's social media sites.

County Manager John Crumpton admits he was somewhat skeptical of the initiative at first. However after meeting with committee members and seeing the live chat and social media interactions he was sold on the idea.

"The commissioners always want to make sure the public is well informed of what is going on in county government," said Crumpton. "Now we are able to send out event schedules and notices that improve citizen participation in the services we offer."

One unique component of the program is the county's live chat communication module, which allowed citizens to "chat" with customer service representatives in the Tax Department. Even with little advertising, the county experienced two or three chats a day for tax-related questions.

The tax office was chosen as the test department because it receives a high volume of questions and because Brinson frequently works with other county departments and could gauge how effective the software could be for other departments. The initial deployment of this software was for tax-related questions only.

"With live chat available to our citizens, they are assured of reaching an available county representative, and we want the citizens to receive accurate and expeditious assistance," Brinson said. "The features of the software we have chosen allow us to take customer service to new levels by being able to perform actions not necessarily available through telephone and e-mail."

Some of the many features offered through the software include:

• automatic archiving of chats at a relatively small file size;
• transferring of chats from staff member to staff member while keeping all the dialogue previously discussed (so the citizen doesn't have to repeat information);
• conference chat so county employees can work as a team to assist a citizen; and
• screen sharing.

Brinson believes chat communications improve an organization's service and productivity.

"Look at companies such as Dell," he said. "I can visit Dell's Web site, chat with a representative and have him or her fix my computer in the comfort of my own living room. That's great customer service and we want our citizens to have that same satisfaction when dealing with Lee County."

In the Tax Department's interactions throughout the 30-day trial, citizens and other inquirers were very satisfied with the service.

"Shortly after beginning use of Live Chat, I received several comments from customers as far away as Louisiana that were very excited that we were offering Live Chat," said Appraisal Manager Lisa Faulkner. "They enjoyed the ease of use and the convenience that it offered them. Some people do not like to pick up the phone and call someone when they need help, and I believe this offers those individuals another approach to obtain the help and service they deserve."

Instant chat sessions also allow county staff to have standard responses for those routine questions as well. As fast as you can click a mouse in two places, you can have an entire paragraph response for the citizen. Brinson says theoretically you could almost have an entire conversation with a citizen without ever typing the first word, which makes for easy multi-tasking.

Embracing the chat technology is another example of how Lee County is using the Internet to reach out to citizens. The county is currently using four social media sites – Blogger, Facebook, Twitter and YouTube – to share information to citizens.

Beyond the standard Facebook page, Brinson and company have integrated apps such as Google Maps, Petfinder, YouTube and an optional newsletter for fans of the page. Google Maps can be used to identify voting areas, points of interest, area events, county offices, etc. The Petfinder application synchs up to the county's latest adoptable pets, which has proven helpful to animal rescue groups. Fans subscribing to the newsletter can have posts from multiple pages e-mailed to them, thus reducing the likelihood of missing a post from any of their favorite pages. Fans can experience these apps without ever leaving Facebook.

"It allows citizens who might not work a 9-to-5 job the opportunity to interact with their county government, and I think the transparency helps show that we are trustworthy and doing things right as their county government," Brinson said.

Brinson also explains that the language used to develop "apps" for a Facebook page is slightly different and requires a little tweaking.

For more information on Lee County's social media program, Lee Linked, contact Dwane Brinson at (919) 718-4661 or dbrinson@leecountync.gov.