This episode of the Tyler Tech Podcast features a conversation with JD Limberger, permitting director for New Hanover County, North Carolina, on how the county modernized permitting services by focusing on the resident experience. Recorded live at Tyler Connect 2026, the discussion explores how challenging longstanding assumptions and reexamining processes helped streamline workflows, improve communication, and create a more responsive experience for residents, contractors, builders, and developers. JD shares how automation, proactive notifications, instructional resources, and continuous process improvement significantly reduced permit turnaround times, cut call volume, and increased operational efficiency. The conversation also highlights the cultural and organizational changes that supported these efforts, emphasizing the importance of empowering staff, listening to customer feedback, and aligning technology with clear service goals to drive meaningful and lasting improvements in service delivery.
In this episode of the Tyler Tech Podcast, JD Limberger, permitting director for New Hanover County, North Carolina, shares how the county transformed its permitting operation by rethinking the resident experience. Recorded live at Tyler Connect 2026 in Las Vegas, the conversation explores how a fresh perspective on longstanding processes helped uncover opportunities to simplify workflows, improve communication, and create a more responsive experience for residents, contractors, builders, and developers.
The discussion examines how New Hanover County leveraged automation, proactive communication, and continuous process improvement to significantly reduce permit turnaround times, cut call volume nearly in half, and improve operational efficiency across development services. JD explains how automated notifications, embedded instructional videos, and streamlined workflows helped increase transparency, reduce frustration, and free staff to focus on higher-value work.
The episode also highlights the organizational and cultural changes that supported the county’s modernization efforts. JD discusses the importance of empowering staff, listening to customer feedback, and aligning technology with clear service goals. Throughout the conversation, he emphasizes that meaningful transformation begins with understanding the resident experience and being willing to challenge assumptions, simplify processes, and continuously improve how services are delivered.
This episode also highlights emerging strategies for building efficiency in the public sector, with insights into how agencies are using technology and process improvements to do more with existing resources.
· Download: How Governments Build Efficiency at Scale
And learn more about the topics discussed in this episode with these resources:
· Download: AI for Impact: Proven Results for Government
· Download: AI Adoption in Permitting & Licensing: A Practical Guide
· Download: E-Book: AI Built for Local Government
· Download: Building a Resilient Government
· Download: Improving Transparency With Enterprise Software
· Download: How to Create a Unified Digital Payment Experience
· Download: Modern Governments Live in the Cloud
· Read: Permitting Software for Government: 8 Features You Need!
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JD Limberger: One of the things that was kind of exciting was at the at our peak capacity, we were answering about 52,000 phone calls a year with this team of 14 in addition to a lot of other work. That has actually been reduced to, like, 24,000 calls this year.
Josh Henderson: From Tyler Technologies, this is the Tyler Tech Podcast. I’m your host, Josh Henderson. Today’s episode explores what happens when an organization takes a step back and looks at its services through the eyes of its residents. For New Hanover County, North Carolina, that meant rethinking permitting processes, simplifying communications, reducing unnecessary complexity, and creating a more responsive experience for residents, contractors, and developers. Recorded live at Tyler Connect 2026 in Las Vegas, my guest is JD Limberger, permitting director for New Hanover County, North Carolina. In this conversation, JD shares how his team reduced permit turnaround times, cut call volume nearly in half, improved staff morale, and created a more consistent resident experience through automation, proactive communication, and a culture focused on continuous improvement.
We discussed the challenges that prompted this effort, the role technology played in supporting new ways of working, and why understanding the resident experience became the foundation for every decision along the way. Let’s dive right in.
Well, JD, welcome to the Tyler Tech Podcast.
So great to have you here. So today, we’re going to walk through New Hanover County’s journey to a fully modernized customer focused permitting operation. What were the biggest operational challenges and pressures your team faced before this transformation took place?
JD Limberger: Good question. I would say just kind of over the years, we had almost just kind of this is the way we’ve always done it. I don’t think we ever took the time to really kind of look at it for with fresh eyes and say, hey. Instead of looking at it from our perspective, let’s look at it from the customer’s perspective and see what this experience looks like for them.
And I think that’s really the moment was at one day, I was in strategy just to let you know. So, I was actually in another department at the time, and they had asked me to come in and just take a look at operations. And I said, I’m going to apply for a permit just like a normal citizen in our county. Let me just apply for this.
Yeah. And I got through with this experience, and after the after about forty five minutes, I go, oh, boy. I go, I don’t think we ever actually tried this, like, from that that viewpoint. And that was really the start of it was I started taking notes, and by the time I was done, there’s about two hundred things that we were going to implement.
And I said, let’s go to the customers, let’s talk to them and see what their biggest pain point or those touch points are, and how do we how do we start to fix that. And that was really the start to the journey was, I will tell you candidly, and I want to share this, I have an amazing team, and there was an amazing team in place. We haven’t had any turnover. These are all the same people that were there.
But what used to be this arduous, time consuming task where it took weeks and weeks to get a permit with our county Yeah. We were like, we’ve really just completely modernized it to your point. And so, it’s kind of an exciting, least for me, it’s extremely exciting journey.
Josh Henderson: It’s great to hear the no turnover element of it all.
JD Limberger: Yeah. We have one person retire, but I mean and we’ve brought in a couple of, like, fresh faces. But like I said, it’s funny to me that it’s the same exact group of people. And prior to this, like, if you had talked to us two years ago, I mean, the morale was low.
The customers were frustrated. You know? Even, like and even just we weren’t we weren’t really doing what we needed to do for the community. You could feel it.
And so, it was sad. And really, it was just looking again with those fresh eyes and saying, let’s just approach this with instead of being reactive to every problem, let’s really look at what we can do to just anything we can kind of do to streamline it, to simplify it, and that’s really what we implemented.
Josh Henderson: Yeah. We love to hear about our clients being proactive when it comes to this type of stuff. So really, really like to hear that. So, I wanted to touch a little bit too on the fact that you before you were even part of the permitting department, you were able to kind of look into this and realize there were some inefficiencies. Really interesting. You had you had a hands-on experience before you were even part of the department. Very, very interesting.
How did those inefficiencies in high call email volume affect sort of the day to day operations, staff morale, and the experience of, you know, builders, contractors, and homeowners, things like that?
JD Limberger: And I won’t get into, like, all the details of, like, kind of the metrics behind it, but, basically, we had a team of fourteen people. Yeah. And just imagine every day you’re going into work eight hours a day, and you are working as hard as you physically can. But it had gotten to the point where after COVID, the development was so vast.
And I know you don’t know where we’re from, but we live in this beautiful beach community, absolutely gorgeous. And what happened was a lot of people were moving there. During COVID, they had the ability to move from New York and Massachusetts, and they’re coming into North Carolina in droves. And so, boom.
I mean, this development was really growing. So, we have these people working eight hours a day. Every day, they’re working overtime. They’re working weekends.
They’re working in the evenings, and they’re coming back to work the next day with more work than they started. And so just year after year, they’re like, no matter how much we’re throwing at this, we can’t keep up with the workload. And so, the morale, like I said, was really low because wasn’t from a lack of effort. It was just that the way we had built the system was so inefficient that they really weren’t empowered to figure out what can we do to really, you know, to streamline this process.
Josh Henderson: Now your goal seems to be to focus on the value for the customer. I mean, that that’s kind of our mentality as well, from a Tyler perspective. But how did that philosophy for you shape your approach to redesigning workflows, automations, and communications?
JD Limberger: I love that question. A couple things. One is I started really talking to the team about an 80/20 Word Error Rate (WER). So previously, what happened was we built a system that we tried to just plan for every eventuality, every problem that could possibly exist.
And I said, you know what? The streamline list, let’s build it for 80/20. 80% of these are going to go through smoothly. They’re going to be normal operations.
That 20% are going to be outside that normal scope, and those will handle as a one off. So, really, we built this for the mass majority of, like, let’s be efficient with this and try to make it as simple as we can instead of just trying to, like, basically, any eventuality that could possibly Yeah. Pop up. So that was one of the things.
And then the other piece is we really looked at it and said, if it doesn’t bring value to the customer, it needs to go away. And I will share this, and this will be the first time I ever roll. I say it with my supervisors. I really look at it as a win-win mentality.
And so, everything we did had to be a win for the customer, for our development community, our building developers. The second is it had to actually align with the with our actual organization or strategic plan, what our commissioners, like, saw as a vision for the building community. But also, it had to be a win for the front end staff. And so, if you think about that, trying to get three of these things to all align is not usually the easiest thing.
But I’ll be honest, if you put enough effort, enough passion into it, it can be done. And we really, like I said, I’ll share metrics somewhere along this line where it’s obviously that it did work for us well. But we really were like, let’s just try to simplify and make it good for all parts or all the parties.
Josh Henderson: Yeah. Well, let’s talk a little bit about the automations that were built as well. You know, from immediate submission emails to plan review guidance, invoices, permit issuance, inspections, certifications of occupancy. Yep. How did that change the customer experience when those automations took place?
JD Limberger: We wanted to approach it again from a proactive approach, and we said we’re going to just be very transparent and very communicative. We’ll it’s everything we can get out to the customer, instead of them having to call us or come in or ask for a special favor, or who do you know, we’re going to treat everybody equally, whether you’re, like somebody just building a deck on the back of their house to the biggest developer in town building a mixed use development where, like, everybody gets treated the same. But the truth is, is we just wanted to be extremely efficient and effective. And so that’s really the approach that we took to it was, let’s build these automations, and really that was a major turning point for us is these, at any stage of the application process or that building process, you’re always notified what’s next.
So, yes, we received it. Here’s kind of a guideline of what’s going to happen next and the time frame. And really what that did was it just stopped people from having to come in or call. So, one of the things that was kind of exciting was at the at our peak capacity, we were answering about 52,000 phone calls a year with this team of 14 in addition to a lot of other work.
That has actually been reduced to, like, 24,000 calls this year. So, you can think about a team that used to before people used to have to answer phones all day, every 30 seconds.
Each person’s blowing through these. Now one person handles that, but that gives three extra pieces to actually proactively work on permits, which means we’re more efficient.
And so those automations were a godsend to us to be quite candid with you because everything happens, like, automated. I mean, we don’t have to manually be like, oh, we’ll send you an email, or let me call you back, or whatever. It’s always just kind of proactively reaching out to the customer. And the thing is with builders; they’re in the field.
So, they’re out on a job site, so they’re getting to their email, hey. Here’s your CO, or here’s your permit issuance, or here’s an inspection that failed and why. So, they never have to reach out. They’re always getting those communications directly to them.
Josh Henderson: Essentially, cutting those phone calls in half is pretty remarkable.
JD Limberger: Yeah. It was amazing. Well, it changed the culture. I mean, think about you’re just getting yelled at for eight hours a day about every 30 seconds.
Someone’s like, where are we at? What is this process? How do I move forward to? They’re like, we don’t get people calling anymore to yell at us.
Josh Henderson: Stay tuned. We’ll be right back with more of the Tyler Tech Podcast.
Every day, government leaders are being asked to do more with less, manage growing workloads, meet rising expectations, and address staffing and budget challenges.
Jade Champion: And while efficiency is a priority for nearly every organization, today’s challenges require a different approach. It’s not just about improving individual processes; it’s about expanding capacity without adding resources.
Josh Henderson: That means connecting systems, simplifying workflows, reducing manual work, and giving staff more time to focus on the services that matter most.
Jade Champion: Across the country, public sector agencies are improving operations through automation, artificial intelligence, integrated systems, and smarter ways of working.
Josh Henderson: Discover how agencies are reducing complexity, freeing up staff time, and creating more capacity to serve their communities. Visit the link in our show notes and download our free eBook, How Governments Build Efficiency at Scale, to learn from real-world examples, client stories, and expert insights.
Jade Champion: Now let’s get back to the Tyler Tech Podcast.
Josh Henderson: Now you also added 30 second videos and embedded instructions in emails, which, as a multimedia guy, warms my heart. How did these small touches improve understanding, reduce errors, and free up staff?
JD Limberger: Sure. Well, one of the touch points, like, when I we came in from strategy is, again, we were usually between seven to 11 days out. So, if you submit an application to me or to our department, it would take us between seven to 11 days just to open it, to actually have the time to look at it, to kind of see if it was complete or if it something had to happen. So, with those automations, that really started to change the flow, and that really went from a seven to eleven days out to everything was done within one day.
So obviously, from a builder perspective, where time is the money is money, they were thrilled that everything got turned over within one day. So, we had already kind of gone after the low line fruit. We had gained a lot of gains there. But then we were like, well, we have certain touch points that we can hear constantly on the phone calls of, you know, oh, my inspection failed.
What do I do next? Or I can’t log into the system, so can you help me do that? So, what we did was we had a young gentleman, I’m going to mention his name because I adore him, Jacob Ingle, and he’s really good with media. And so, he started making these videos with other people on our team where we were like, we know this is a pain point for our customers, and we started embedding these 20 second videos at all different places, whether in the automation itself, if you failed an inspection, we said, here’s a little video to show how to, like, reapply for an inspection or what it means to you.
Or if you are logging into the system, we were like, hey. If you’re getting stuck here, watch this 20 second video that will kind of guide you through it. So, it’s on the website. It’s in the actual permit applications themselves, and then it was it was kind of, like, all around.
And it was more of the it was fine tuning. But, again, we’ve done that now roughly seven months those videos have been out, and we’ve reached almost 4,000 hits on those for us, which is really exciting to see these videos, like, take off. We were like so, again, we had already done a lot of big games, but these were really kind of fun, exciting little projects that we were like, we want to explain to people. We don’t want to make it long winded.
We don’t want them to have to call us.
So, the video is really as a multimedia guy, I’m happy to say it worked well for us.
Josh Henderson: I mean I mean, like, think about the ease of use with a thirty second video as compared to, like, a 20 page PDF document.
JD Limberger: 100% are an SOP, like a standard operating procedure.
The other piece is we’re open 24/7. So, people are coming in on the weekends and the evenings. They’re, like, you know, a building contractor.
They’re coming in at seven, eight o’clock at night. Well, we’re not open. So, if I mean, you know how frustrating it is if they’re like, I can’t log in to your system. Yeah.
Whereas you’re like, watch this 20 second video. It’ll guide you through it. And like I said, they were really we won a NACo, like, it’s won a national award for these videos this year. So, it was really exciting time for our team.
It was innovative. I liked it. Nothing to do with me. The other best part about this is I love innovation, but the truth is this was all from our team.
I had nothing to do with it. They were like, can we build these videos? And I’m like, have at it.
And even that, just watching the empowerment our team would develop with these was really magical.
Josh Henderson: Well, having the buy in for that type of stuff is really important as well. So don’t sell yourself short.
How have you been able to expand these automations across, you know, all development services? So, building safety, zoning, environmental health, engineering, fire safety, planning, water authority, so to sort of provide a consistent seamless experience for customers?
JD Limberger: We have a lot of jurisdictions that are under this umbrella. So not only do we have seven or eight departments that work in this system, but we have outside jurisdictions that aren’t in our direct control, if that makes sense, but they all kind of use this one system, and it’s to make it a seamless experience for the customer. If you live in New Hanover County in North Carolina, everybody’s kind of get the same thing.
What’s been nice with the automations is it was new technology or new innovation. The videos are the same way, but what happened is other departments are looking at us and going, wow. You guys were eleven days out. It was a nightmare what you guys were experiencing. We’re kind of experiencing some of these same pain points, and we can steal this from you. They’re like, can we put your videos inside of our repairman application?
Or they’re like, hey. Can we use your automations? And we’re like so we built all these automations to be generic.
Anybody in the county can use these. So, whether you’re the city of Wilmington or a beach community, you can just take these things, and they’re all generic enough. They’re specific enough to be helpful to the customer, but generic enough that they can be used robustly across all the different departments, if that makes sense.
It does. So yeah. And, hopefully, over time, like I said, they can see it’s working, and so it’s not completely done yet, but they’re slowly buying into, hey. Is it okay if we use these?
And we’re like, please do, because it’ll change your it’ll change the morale of your team to be quite candid with you. So being able to repurpose stuff, that’s helpful. Simplify. Simplify. Simplify.
Josh Henderson: What are the some of the most meaningful results you’ve seen in terms of permit setup times, call volume, submittal accuracy, and front desk service? We talked about call volume a little bit already, but if you want to just touch on those.
JD Limberger: I’ll talk I love it. Metrics, I love. I’m a data person. Again, we went from seven to 11 days out in our permit to over the last 18 months, we’ve consistently been at one day.
So, I can’t emphasize enough everything that comes into us, whether it’s a public records request, whether it’s anything. I don’t care. Any type of work is turned over within one business day. That’s huge.
Think about how much it just it’s solace it offers to the building community that they no longer have to worry about what happens. They know, hey. If I need a CO issued, tomorrow it’s going to be out. So that has been a huge godsend.
From the front desk, the permitting department is one of the most visited departments in our community, and so we handle more front end customers than anyone else. Even at this point, there’s still a lot of people, like old school developers, like, want to come in and talk to someone face to face, which they’re welcome to do. Sure. You know, some people aren’t as computer literate, or they want a little more handholding, so we handle basically all the front end customer service or a majority of it.
We service thousands of customers each year, and one of the metrics that I’m really proud of is we service those customers within five seconds. If you walk into New Hanover County in the government building, somebody on my team is going to talk to you within five seconds and help you right at the front desk. You’re not waiting for someone to come down from a fifth floor or fourth floor.
Somebody’s right there to be like, let me just walk you through.
And so that’s something I’m really proud of as well, to be candid, really.
Josh Henderson: As you should be. Now from a staff perspective, how did this work impact, you know, morale with the staff Sure. Engagement, your department your department’s culture? It sounds like you have a really great culture there. How has the team’s mindset shifted from reactive to proactive as well?
JD Limberger: It’s funny. I hope well, first of all, when we got there, I think some of the things that I saw was I really wanted to make sure that we spent the time to train everybody up, so everybody felt comfortable. And then I was like, let’s trust not only our employees but the customers. The system had been built where it was more it was very bureaucratic or bureaucratic.
I mean, was really like a lot of touch a button, move to the next step, touch a button. And I was like, let’s trust our customers that they have some idea of what they’re doing, and let’s actually train our people up to empower them to kind of, like, know what to look for and how to approach the work. And so, I hope I mean, I can’t say obviously, I’m only one person out of fifteen, but I hope that the team feels empowered and that the morale has improved. Like I said, we haven’t any turnover.
Knock on wood. So, I’m thrilled about that. And I will just tell you, they do all the work between, and I should just want to make sure I give credit between our IT analysts, our system coordinators, supervisors, the specialists. They do all the work.
The truth is I’m just a person that keeps asking, why are we doing this? Why do we do it this way? But they’re the ones that actually come up with the suggestions on how to make it all better.
And so, I think, hopefully, they see that they’re listened to, that they’re heard, that they’re respected, and hopefully, that’s helped fix or helped win morale over the last two years.
Josh Henderson: This has been really great to hear, you know, the story of New Hanover County and the modernization efforts in place. But I’m curious to get your take on you know, for other counties or cities who are experiencing or want to experience a similar modernization journey, what lessons would you share about focusing on customer value, building trust, or aligning technology with culture and process?
JD Limberger: Just looking at it from our or kind of the journey of two years, be humble. I mean, honestly, it’s just saying I’m going to stop. What I could tell when I came into the department two years ago or a little over two and a half years ago was that, again, they were just in reaction mode where they’re just trying to keep up with the workload. But somebody has to take a step back and say, are we really looking at this from the viewpoint of the customers?
Are we easy to do business with? Do we really care about what their experience is? Not what’s best for us, but what’s best for the customer. And I would just say for other communities, if you’re in this spot where we were two years ago, is just take a breath.
Look at it with open eyes. Ask your customers. They’re going to tell you what they don’t like or what’s not working for them, and then be humble enough to be like, okay. We can change this.
And that would really be know that sounds like an oversimplification, but that really was kind of the start to this whole process for us.
Josh Henderson: That’s really, really great. Well, really appreciate you taking the time to share this story with us. Wish New Hanover County the best of luck with the future and the endeavors that are taking place there. And, yeah, really, really appreciate you taking the time.
JD Limberger: Thank you so much. I really appreciate your time.
Josh Henderson: As we heard today, improving the resident experience often starts with a simple but important shift in perspective, seeing your processes the way your residents do. JD shared how New Hanover County challenged long standing assumptions, simplified workflows, and prioritized proactive communication to create a permitting experience that is faster, more transparent, and easier to navigate.
Along the way, the county reduced permit intake times, significantly reduced call volume, and created new opportunities for staff to focus on serving residents. For organizations looking to improve service delivery, New Hanover County’s experience offers a valuable reminder that technology is most effective when it’s paired with a clear focus on value, transparency, and continuous improvement. If you’d like to learn more about the solutions and strategies discussed in this episode, be sure to check out the show notes for additional resources. We’d also love to hear your feedback.
Fill out the listener survey linked in the notes or reach out anytime at podcast@tylertech.com. And be sure to subscribe, rate, and review the show so you never miss an episode. For Tyler Technologies, I’m Josh Henderson. Thanks for listening to the Tyler Tech Podcast.