The joint customer service centre of the City of Turku and Kela, the Social Insurance Institution of Finland, Monitori Market Square will open its services at the street level of the Shopping Centre KOP-Kolmio in June 2020. The new customer service centre will centralize various services at one spot and will make them more easily accessible. The whole customer service centre of Kela in Eerikinkatu Street will be transferred to the Monitori Market Square.

Services of Monitori Market Square

  • General Customer Service
  • Customer service of the Turku region public service Föli
  • Ticket sales for the Philharmonic Orchestra and the City Theatre
  • Infotori, Guidance in Immigrants’ Own Language
  • Tourist Information
  • Part of the customer service of the Urban Environment Division: Parking Control, Resident Parking, Boat Rental
  • Sales and Downloads of the Sports Bracelets
  • Service Advice for Early Childhood Education
  • Service Advice for the elderly people and the families with children
  • Patient Ombudsman and Social Welfare Ombudsman
  • Social Advisor
  • Customer Service Consultancy for the Employment Services
  • Customer Service of the Youth Services
  • Digital support
  • Cash Services
  • Switchboard of the City of Turku
  • Customer Service of Kela:
    - Customer service in the customer premises and guidance to the online services of Kela in the customer terminals
    - Expert services by appointment and with a numbering system

- The customer is always in the middle of the new service delivery system. Along with the unique concept of Monitori Market Square, we want to bring several central services with the customer guidance under the same roof in order to make it simpler for the city residents, Sari Kinnunen, Development Manager of the City of Turku emphasizes.

- The City of Turku and Kela have been operating for years in close cooperation at Monitori Skanssi at the Shopping Centre Skanssi. This creates a good basis for expanding the activities to the service centre of Monitori Market Square, Kinnunen states.

- It’s great from the point of view of Kela that we will operate in the same premises with the City of Turku and are fully accessible. We have several clients in common. It serves all well that we as the service providers are under the same roof. The system applies the ‘one door principle’ in practice, Satu Osola, Group Manager of Kela says.

From the services of the City of Turku, the services of the Turku region public service Föli, Parking Control and Tow Away Services, Tourist Information, General Customer Service, Guidance in Immigrants’ Own Language (in Finnish known as ‘Infotori’), and the Service Advice for Early Childhood Education, for example, will be placed at Monitori Market Square.

Päivi Holm (on the left) came to reserve a space for the youth. Customer adviser Ann-Mari Hammarberg advises her.

From the services of the Welfare Division, the Service Counsellors for Elderly People and the Counsellors of Social Services, as well as the Service Counselling for the Well-Being and the Health Promotion will move to the new location. The Service Counselling for the Disability Services and the Family Advice Counselling as well as the Service Counselling for the Family Law Services will be available some days a week. The Social Ombudsman and the Patient Ombudsman will also be transferred to Monitori Market Square.

- Nowadays about 70 percent of the applications come to Kela in electric form. This is a much better alternative for the client because the applications and the attachments will get much more quickly to be treated. For example, the unemployment benefit follow-up notifications will get immediately to be processed electronically, and benefits can be paid out to the customers much faster. Kela can help and guide our clients in the e-services together with the City of Turku at Monitori Market Square, Osola says.

As a new thing, the customers can get more extensive digital support completely free of charge at Monitori Market Square. There are about twenty client terminals in the premises where the customers can do their business online on their own or with the help of the service personnel.

Services related to the land use, construction, building permits and city planning remain in their current location (in the street address Puolalankatu 5).

When Monitori Market Square will be opened, the activities of Poiju will cease to exist. Poiju has focused on the service guidance for the elderly. The current office of the public transport company Föli, which is currently located in the corner of the Streets Aurakatu and Eerikinkatu, will be closed as well when it will be transferred to Monitori Market Square.

The New Premises Will Be Reachable and Accessible

The new Monitori will be more service-oriented and it will provide multichannel customer service, because there will be more customer service assistants and the opening hours will be longer. Many of the customer service assistants of Monitori Market Square will also interact with the clients through other service channels such as telephone or chat in addition to the personalized customer service.

The whole space is in one level (in the former premises of the clothing store Aleksi 13), which has been divided into customer premises and staff premises. The facilities will be fully reachable and accessible. The Shopping Centre KOP-kolmio is centrally located in the immediate vicinity of the Market Square and it is easily accessible by various means of transport.

At this point, the estimated number of staff for the whole service point is about 50 of which the city will employ about 35 people.

- When the service centre Monitori Market Square will be opened, it won’t be completely ready. We expect to get plenty of customer feedback in order to develop the activities of Monitori Market Square further, wishes Sari Kinnunen.

A common space gives the opportunity for all the service providers to learn from the services of the other units and to develop the joint activities based on that. This will enable the further development of the operations across the organizational boundaries. One of the strengths of the common spaces is that they will enable us to influence a customer's situation proactively.

After the opening of Monitori Market Square, Monitori Skanssi, which is already known to our customers, will continue operating normally. The customer service of Kela continues to serve there, too.

Text: Hannu Waher
Images: Petteri Mäntysaari

Upper image: Satu Mattila (on the right) and Anta Diop get guidance for the online services of Kela.