City of Rauma’s webshop
Online payments improve the customer service at the city of Rauma
The Challenge
City of Rauma had been using CPU’s point-of-sale solutions for decades already when few years ago the city officials set to modernize the city’s customer service.
Changes were made into Paytrail payment service and new Hellewi and Trimble services were introduced. These steps created the need for integrated web payment portal, which would enable transferring the payment data from one system to another.
In the end, the city of Rauma decided to go further and get a proper web shop to serve as a new easy-to-use channel for purchasing different products and paying for public services.
The goal was to solve the enrollment issues faced by organizers of different trips and other services that required collecting additional information from the registrees.
“The enrollments were previously managed just by Excel sheets, which was quite arduous, “ says Tarja Helminen from the city’s accounting and payments’ office.
The organizers of the trip used to collect all additional information from each registree by phone, which took a long time. Still some of the registrees failed to commit to their enrollments made through phone and never showed up for the trip.
“They book seats to the trip but never pay them. When we call to remind them, they suddenly decide not to attend after all. Suddenly, we have 10 vacant seats just a day before the trip is supposed to take place,” service advisor Tiina Koskela describes the challenges in her work.
The Solution
In February 2019, City of Rauma’s own Ceepos web shop was opened. Through the web shop anyone can purchase local museum’s products, but also enroll for trips, renew their gym cards and add money to their Ceepos mobile app.
The municipality can serve its residents online 24/7 no matter the location. The web shop is maintained by the local Service Point Pyyrman together with the staff of the museum.
The web shop also serves as a payment channel for products and services that are aimed for a specific group of people and are not visible on the public site. Those products are paid through the payment link sent directly to the buyer by email.
“The enrollments were previously managed just by Excel sheets, which was quite arduous, ”
Tarja Helminen from city’s Accounting and Payments’ Office
The same system also supports products aimed only for the employees of the city organization. Those products are made available in the intranet page of the city and by clicking the items there, the buyer is directed to pay them in Ceepos payment platform.
“2nd year students in high school have their own dedicated products that can be paid through the web shop but are not visible for all public. Similarly, the city employees can pay for their lunches and heated parking spaces through the web shop. That is less work for the payroll unit, since they don’t have to make those reductions from their salary anymore.”
““Our job has become much easier, when there is no more need to make calls to ask shoe sizes and other details needed for the trip.”
Tiina Koskela, service advisor
The Results
Especially the online enrollments through the web shop have become the new norm in publicly organized leisure activities in Rauma.
The registrees fill in the required information on the online form themselves and the organizer can access the information securely through the system.
“Our job has become much easier, when there is no more need to make calls to ask shoe sizes and other details needed for the trip. More importantly the registrees actually commit to their enrollment once they have paid for their trip in the web shop,” Koskela says.
Now the payments are received on time and there are less cancellations and missing information with the enrollments.
The web shop has allowed city of Rauma to reduce the number of their points-of sale that process cash payments. The reduced processing of cash and invoicing saves a lot of time and frees the resources for other things.
The web shop has become a popular channel to access public services and the single most popular product in the web shop is paying for the annual gym cards.
“Especially the residents of the more remote areas appreciate not having to drive all the way to Rauma city center just to make a payment for their local gym.”