I am the Dauphin County Register of Wills and Clerk of the Orphans’ Court. We are an administrative office in the courthouse. We deal with the Register of Wills side, which is the probate of estates.
We are the ones to appoint the executor or administrator of an estate, and then the clerk of the orphans’ court side is responsible for issuing marriage licenses, and we are the record-keeping office for all filings orphans’ court-related. We have gone from doing everything in person before COVID to now approximately eighty-five percent of our business is done virtually. That is huge. And it has changed the dynamic of how our team works and how we interact with the public.
How we used to operate was on a walk-in basis. Everything was unscheduled. So our clientele would come visit us initially. We would have to review and vet paperwork at the counter in front of them. And sometimes it would require additional paperwork or additional forms, and that would cause them to schedule a time to come back in to visit us again to get the required documentation that we needed. With the virtual platforms, we are able to vet things prior and reach out and let the clientele know that we might need additional information before we have our initial interaction.
One of the biggest requests that we were getting was for certified copies, and that used to be coming through the telephone. Now those requests come online through our case management system, and we are able to fulfill those requests in a more timely manner, more quickly, and more easily. Previously, may have taken twenty to thirty minutes. Now we can fulfill a request within five minutes. We were able to process marriage licenses for couples throughout the entire state.
There were some clerks of the orphans’ court, some registers of wills who were unable to do marriage licenses. And since we were able to process them virtually, people from Philadelphia County, people from Lancaster County, people from smaller counties. They were calling our office. They were saying, “We need help. We’d like to get our marriage license. Can you help us?” And we were able to do that. And the added bonus to that was that we were able to increase revenues for Dauphin County during that period of time. And, the Dauphin County commissioners who haven’t raised taxes for over nineteen years, they were thrilled to see an increase in revenues.
The virtual platforms are so user-friendly and easy to use that training has been a breeze, really. Most of our new hires are up and running within a week’s time on their own conducting conferences. They’re comfortable. They feel comfortable with the application. They feel comfortable if they would have to troubleshoot, which is fantastic.
Providing services with enhanced technology is what we’re all about here in the Dauphin County Register of Wills office. I couldn’t have done it without Neumo, and we take great pride in having changed many of our systems.
The convenience, the time savings, the money savings, all of that has changed our office for the better. We are no longer the stale old office that did things the old way. We are constantly looking to improve processes, make it better, make it easier, make it better overall experience for our customers, and I think we have done that. Our goal is to continue to do that, and I look forward to working with Neumo to find out what those new solutions will be down the road.
