Published: Sep 20, 2024

Optimising citizen experience for CPFB: cloud-based case management solution with integrated functions and streamlined processes

The Central Provident Fund Board (CPFB) is a key pillar of Singapore’s social security system helping Singapore Citizens and Permanent Residents (“CPF members”) set aside funds to build a strong foundation for retirement. To enhance its service efficiency and responsiveness, CPFB partnered with NCS to implement a cloud-based solution that streamlined case management and improved citizen interactions. This upgrade has transformed CPFB’s service capabilities, providing CPF officers with a consolidated view of customer profiles and interactions across all touchpoints, while offering CPF members a more seamless experience.

As a core institution to Singapore’s social security, service excellence and efficient citizen-government interactions are crucial to the Board’s mission to enable Singaporeans to have a secure retirement. Prior to July 2024, CPFB relied on 2 separate on-premise systems, i.e. Case Relationship Management (CRM) and Knowledge Management (KM) systems. This fragmented approach hindered the efficiency and delivery of exceptional customer service, so CPFB looked to a cloud solution that could consolidate their existing systems to elevate their interactions with customers and optimise their officers’ efficiency.

With NCS’s extensive experience with CPFB’s systems, NCS embarked on a transformative project aimed at integrating various CPFB’s customer engagement channels and streamlining existing processes. Leveraging Salesforce Cloud solutions, NCS developed an integrated system to consolidate and enhance CPFB’s omni-channel capabilities, reinforcing their service philosophy to provide “Service that empowers, trusted by all” with the ambition of delivering personalised case management at scale. 

NCS worked with CPFB to implement Next-Gen Integrated Customer Engagement (NICE 2.0) - a platform serving as the foundation for CPFB’s omni-channel capabilities, with the ability to include future customer engagement channels and seamlessly integrate with other systems and applications within the Board and Whole-of-Government (WOG). The solution leveraged Salesforce and Amazon Web Services (AWS) under Government on Commercial Cloud (GCC) 2.0, consolidated the CRM and KM, and included an omni-channel portal. NCS also completed the data migration exercise, transferring more than 7 million customer records from CPFB’s systems to Salesforce.

NCS finalised the cloud design and completed the cloud implementation in 11 months due to our familiarity with Government cloud requirements. This was a remarkable feat as it involved the largest & most complex Salesforce implementation in Singapore public sector to-date with direct citizen interaction and integration across multiple CPFB’s backend business systems and various WOG services. 

NICE 2.0 also combines CRM and KM, allowing officers to leverage their internal and external FAQs to compose replies to customers and have the visibility of customer’s recently viewed FAQs. The portal also supports an online enquiry form that auto-prompts relevant FAQs based on customer’s selection and input in the form. This ensures that customer receive timely support round the clock even before they write in, and free up CPFB officers’ time for more complex account-specific enquiries.

• Salesforce CRM: Implemented Case Management features and a Customer 360 view that consolidates customer information from multiple backend systems, including members' CPF scheme participation.
• Omni-channel Web Portal: Leveraged Salesforce Experience cloud to develop a new Portal that hosts the public FAQs, an online enquiry form and a Mailbox where CPF members can easily retrieve a copy of their correspondence with the Board.
• Knowledge Management: Enables the public to search for relevant FAQs within each CPF scheme category for self-help, and provide feedback on FAQs to the Board through a thumb-up or thumb-down rating. Officers can also create, update and access both internal and external FAQs within the same system. 
• CPFB-tailored Automated Response & Mail: Sends auto-acknowledgement email to customers when the Board successfully receives their requests, and sends auto-interim reply when officers require more time to work on the requests. 
• Integration with WOG services: Integrated and leveraged Singapore Government Tech Stack (SGTS) and WOG services such as mail services, authentication using Singpass/Corppass, GCC, APEX and WOGAA.

Overall, this collaboration with NCS has significantly strengthened CPFB’s ability to build and maintain robust customer relationships. Below are some of the key outcomes delivered as part of this project:

• Shortened system loading time for a customer profile by 60% from 9.1 seconds to 3.5 seconds, significantly reducing time taken by officers to assess a customer’s profile and request when engaging in person and over the phone. 
• Enhanced customer empowerment via automatic suggestion of FAQs in the online enquiry form.
• Reduced system maintenance requirements as the solution largely leveraged Salesforce’s out-of-the-box (OOTB) features and kept customisation to under 20%.
• Improved process efficiency by pivoting to structured correspondence and decommissioning more than 20 email inboxes. The online enquiry form ensures that necessary information is provided at the onset, allowing the Board to act on the queries expeditiously.
• Achieved Single Source of Truth for knowledge articles where officers can create, update and access internal & external facing FAQs via a single system.