Lambeth city council building exterior.

Lambeth Council implements the Q-Flow platform for Appointment Booking

September 23, 2024

Lambeth is a borough in South London, England, and forms part of Inner London. Lambeth Council provides a wide range of public services to support a population of more than 300,000 residents from the Lambeth Civic Centre in Brixton.

The Challenge

All of Lambeth Council’s services were previously offered on a walk-in basis. This resulted in crowded waiting rooms and long queues throughout the week. Residents often had to wait several hours in the service centre and, in some cases, were not served at all. These conditions created frustration for both citizens and council staff.

In 2014, Lambeth Council implemented Q-Flow® as a queue management solution. This introduced structure to the service environment and helped ensure that more residents could be served within operational hours. Over time, Lambeth Council worked closely with its ACF Technologies Account Manager to further improve service delivery.

The council ultimately decided to transition from a queue-based model to an appointment-based service model. Q-Flow began supporting both appointment booking and appointment management, while online booking functionality was introduced on the council’s website. This allowed residents to schedule their own appointments in advance and significantly reduced congestion at the Civic Centre. As a result, the council no longer experiences unmanageable queues in its service centre.

The objectives identified for this transformation included:

  • Making better use of internal resources
  • Improving operational efficiency while reducing costs
  • Increasing visibility of council services for residents
  • Enhancing the overall citizen experience
  • Improving customer relationships, satisfaction levels, and Net Promoter Scores
  • Ensuring ongoing solution support to maintain high service standards
Lambeth council employee working with ACF employee to implement AI-enhanced queue management and appointment booking solution on laptop.

Solutions

ACF worked with Lambeth Council to implement an enterprise Appointment Booking System and the following, tailored solutions for this local council:

The Results

The experience of booking and waiting for an appointment with Lambeth Council has been significantly improved for local residents. Previously, residents often had to visit the Civic Centre in person and wait in hopes of being seen, sometimes for several hours. Today, residents can book appointments online and arrive at the Civic Centre at the scheduled time indicated in their appointment reminders.

The implementation of Q-Flow has delivered several measurable improvements:

  • Reduced waiting times for residents
  • Reduced average appointment booking time
  • Improved staff efficiency when booking and delivering services
  • Higher staff satisfaction with the appointment booking system
  • Improved access to operational data and insights through the reporting suite
  • Increased overall resident satisfaction with the appointment booking experience

These improvements have significantly enhanced the appointment booking journey for both Lambeth residents and council staff.