re3 have increased efficiency and improved the resident experience with scalable booking technology.

Project Context

re3 is a waste management partnership between the Bracknell Forest, Reading and Wokingham Borough Councils, and FCC Environment.

The partnership operates two sites that see over 7,500 visitors each week. But here’s where this project gets interesting. re3 already had a booking system in place, but they still contacted us. Why? It’s simple. They needed more; the limited functionality of their existing system was affecting the user experience and creating excess work for their staff.

The Challenge

re3 needed a scalable booking system that would:

• Provide staff with enough flexibility to alter their offering in real-time to limit wasted capacity, increase site efficiency, and improve the recycling rate.
• Improve the resident experience by making it easy to self-serve, reducing wait times and improving communication. 
• Help staff to improve resource allocation and optimise appointment structures by providing insights from real-time data. 
• Enable residents to make same-day bookings and re-release cancelled slots in real-time.
• Help staff better manage capacity, enforce social distancing, and reduce traffic build-up in the local area.
• Reduce the workload of staff by automating time-consuming admin tasks.
• Deliver a fully accessible, fully secure booking journey that adheres to the WCAG 2.1 AA, ISO 27001, and PCI payment standards.

In short, the booking solution delivered all of this and more.

The Solution

re3’s new booking system has helped them to improve site efficiency, increase resident satisfaction, and safely manage capacity.

With access to real-time data and a flexible back-office suite, re3 has been able to add (or remove) time slots, alter appointment lengths, and instantly re-release cancelled appointments. This has helped them to meet fluctuating demand and allocate the right amount of time to each booking.

But that’s not all. With automated communications, re3 has also reduced the number of no-shows — this, combined with the above, has helped them to increase the efficiency of their sites and improve their recycling rate.

Sarah Innes, re3 monitoring and performance officer, adds that:

“The bookinglab solution has enabled the use of real-time records on site. As a result, re3 residents can more easily cancel any unwanted bookings so that these can be made available to someone else, allowing the sites to operate more efficiently.”

Interestingly, 99% of bookings are now made online. So it’s clear that the booking system has been a hit with residents. However, with reduced wait times, improved communication, and the ability to book an appointment in less than 60 seconds, at any time, on any internet-connected device — this is unsurprising.

Check out the solution that helped re3 achieve success. 

Learn about HWRC bookings