While New Smyrna Beach did have a website that they used to reach their customers and residents, it was antiquated, built in-house, and was not supported. Additionally, there was no redundancy and no information stored within the on-site server. It was not user friendly from either the front or back end, and they felt that the layout was horrible.
Ellen Fisher, Communications Coordinator, stated “Our previous solution didn’t meet our needs, and I disliked everything about it. It provided us with a presence on the internet to place information, but that was it.” It did NOT help them to communicate with their customers. Ellen wanted to see their website move to a more modern format with simpler design, more concise content with emphasis on images. They wanted to keep the basic content of their current site but with a more up-to-date presentation of the information. They wanted to be able to update content in-house easily without relying on an outside contractor and wanted the added advantage of an outage management system. She loved the idea that Muni-Link WebPresence could meet these needs as well as the fact that WebPresence offered remote website hosting and is recommended for security and accessibility.
Once Ellen was approached about seeing a demo of WebPresence, her demo was scheduled promptly and she was impressed by the tool and felt it was priced right. Because New Smyrna Beach was expecting hurricane Irma to make landfall directly in their path in under a week, they had a very tight deadline. They knew there would be flooding and power outages and it was imperative to be live before Irma hit in order to communicate with their customers. The Muni-Link Team was able to have Ellen’s new site designed and live in two business days. With the help of Muni-Link WebPresence staff, they were able to communicate outages, updates, and instructions to their customers before, during, and after the hurricane. Once they were back in their offices, the training process was thorough and easy to understand.
Ellen feels that the WebPresence customer support has been amazing. “Their response time is incredible and the support team is extremely helpful.” They are now able to update their site in-house regularly and easily. They are very happy with their decision to switch to Muni-Link WebPresence. When asked what her favorite features were, Ellen remarked “Honestly, I can’t isolate one thing that I could call my favorite!”
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