Case Study: City of Grand Rapids achieves faster digital services and reduced walk-ins with OpenCities

City of Grand Rapids - Customer Case Study

The City of Grand Rapids was working with an outdated website that was difficult to navigate, inconsistent, and hard for staff to keep current. Many common city services still required residents to print, mail, or fax forms, creating friction for transactions like starting water service, setting up refuse and recycling, and requesting permits. OpenCities helped address these challenges with a more modern digital services website.

Using OpenCities’ platform, including OpenForms™ with Smart Logic, the city launched an online experience with over 89 services available and a streamlined content structure built from analytics. The results included nearly 1,000 new online submissions for start water and refuse service, a 79% reduction in walk-ins for starting water service in just 11 weeks, and an expected conversion of 50% of 80,000 walk-up payments to online payments. OpenCities says the project transformed both the website and the way the City of Grand Rapids does business.

City of Grand Rapids

Rosalynn Bliss

Mayor of Grand Rapids