Bahamas Government Empowers Citizens with Freshworks CX

About Bahamas Government

The Bahamas is a fully self-governing member of the Commonwealth and a member of the United Nations, the Caribbean Community and the Organisation of American States. It is an island country within the Lucayan Archipelago of the West Indies in the North Atlantic. Bahamas has approximately 400,000 inhabitants and a 2023 estimated total GDP of US $17.479 billion.

Services Empowerment

The Bahamas Government realized they lacked understanding of technology, which prompted them to look for a helpdesk solution. They wanted to use modern tools to assist the public with Government services and educate them. To achieve this, they received support from the Inter-American Development Bank (IDB), which provided funds for them to invest in a unified, all-in-one solution, marking the start of their modernization and digitization journey.

As the Government of the Bahamas continued to bring on more online Government services, such as applying for a driver's license, getting work documentation, or registering a vehicle, it noticed a need for bolder support and a unified platform. The goal was to make the process more fluid and frictionless if an external end user needed assistance with a service. To meet this demand, they created a centralized help desk.

As a result, regardless of the agency or service a customer needs, they can speak to a qualified and trained representative whether they reach out via email, phone, or chat. To create this seamless user experience, the Government of the Bahamas implemented Freshworks’ customer service solution for omnichannel support across digital and traditional channels.

Integration took roughly one week to bring their own channels and they were able to integrate WhatsApp, Facebook, E-mail, and Chat in a single day. 

Moving to Freshworks

Before deciding to go through a modernization and digitization project towards a centralized helpdesk, the Government wasn’t supported by any tools. Their customer service was a manual and tedious process that required citizens to send any issue via email. Agents then reviewed those emails and had to individually call each citizen back. 

Therefore, the project began with Freshworks recording why people were calling, and generating statistics. The Government evaluated the top three or four vendors, including Zendesk and Jira, but chose Freshworks due to its exceptional customers' reviews and its integration with phone, chat and social media.

Resolution SLA of 97%

Following the adoption of Freshworks, the Bahamas’ Government relies on its robust analytics. All requests that come in become a layer in the analytics, so the helpdesk can evaluate metrics, such as how many calls a day, what services people call about, which of those are more requested — and also do the exact same thing with WhatsApp and other channels.

In addition, with the integration of social media, the helpdesk now is open from 8am to 12am — more than the previous business hours. It’s possible because citizens can now use chatbots, and the bots create tickets for the agents when they come back online. Before Freshworks, agents would lose citizens’ emails in folders or to spam. Now, all requests are turned into tickets, so nothing falls through the cracks.  “The chat feature really brought about a whole new light as to how we are communicating with our citizens and also we're seeing the technical deficiencies that we have in the country through the helpdesk”, noted Charles Bradley Miller Jr.

There are over 100,000 registered users on the online Government Services Platform "MyGateway", with more than 130,000 applications applied for online. Since June 2022, it has resolved 38,763 customer tickets with a resolution service-level agreement (SLA) of 97%. And, since June 2022, it received 43,853 calls to the helpdesk from the Bahamas and around the world, which leads it to 3,654 calls a month and 122 calls a day.

Looking ahead, plans include increasing agent count aimed at educating more public officers on how to help internal and external users.

“We're expanding our helpdesk. What this showed us is that we need to connect all we have, all existing help desks in the Bahamas. And since this is a centralized solution, and we mostly operate online, what we want to do is, in some cases, to put an agent to connect to another agent and that one agent can connect with that internal help desk. So, we're positioning people in places where they can connect online and manage through this helpdesk architecture that helped us in supporting”, concluded Charles Bradley Miller Jr.

Partner Involvement

GB Advisors met with the Government of the Bahamas, which had been managing their Freshdesk Estate instance for almost two years. After a productive meeting with GB Advisors and the Freshworks commercial team, it became evident that digitalizing customer requests was a priority. In response, Freshworks' customer service solution was recommended as a long-term solution to meet the demands of remote requests and enhance customer service. This is just the beginning of the journey for the Government, and GB Advisors is privileged to have a front-row seat.