Spartanburg, SC uses Acta to increase the capacity of a small front-counter team

Small Team, Big Stress

The City of Spartanburg, SC has an Inspections Department of 4 people. As a small team, staff juggle many responsibilities. On top of their responsibilities, staff constantly field phone calls and emails from constituents needing clarification on their specific permits. 

Addressing customer needs was piling onto all the other responsibilities that staff had. Long back and forth email chains, transferring constituents to other departments, and leaning on senior staff for help on department procedures was costing the City immense resources. 

Benefits of building capacity for a small team

Small teams need focus and resourcefulness. They need to be able to handle a wide variety of customer situations while coordinating with other staff, all without escalating situations up to management often. The lack of standard operating procedures created confusion and resulted in routine inquiries getting passed onto senior management–further hindering staff coordination and restricting overall team productivity. 

The Director of Spartanburg’s Inspections Department, Buddy Bush, needed an easy-to-implement, easy-to-use, and cost-effective solution that would increase staff efficiency and focus while improving staff coordination. They were a small team with limited time and resources, but had a big need for a solution that would help them deliver a strong customer experience without taxing staff. 

Spartanburg decided to go with Acta because it was easy to learn, implement, and use to deliver key outcomes for the department. 

“Acta was a tiny lift for our already overburdened team. IT installed it within minutes, Acta provided us with the support we needed to get started, and we were able to use it to communicate with customers right after installation.” 

With Acta, the Inspections Department has standardized procedures in one place that feeds information directly into staff’s email inbox where all of their constituent conversations end up. 

Staff can now coordinate within and across departments with ease, and Acta has eliminated the need to transfer constituents from one department to another. 

The City’s payback period for Acta was 3 months. 

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