Jan Young
InstantRiverside.com
In it’s eighth year of operation, Riverside’s 311 Call Center has taken over 1 million customer requests.
“This is a terrific milestone, showing just how effective our 311 Call Center is at serving the needs of Riverside’s residents”, said Riverside Mayor Ronald O. Loveridge. “We are especially proud of the innovative free smartphone app, Mobile 311, which makes the service even more convenient.”
In an effort to lighten the load off of the 911 emergency lines, Riverside activated its 311 Call Center in 2004 as a centralized point of contact to answer non-emergency questions on a wide variety of city services. City residents could simply dial 3-1-1 (or 826-5311) 7 days a week for assistance.
During its first six months of operations, the Call Center fielded nearly 14,000 calls.
“At first, a lot of what they did was to simplify the resident’s contact with city departments”, said Riverside Public Utilities Assistant General Manager Mike Bacich, who oversees the center’s activities. “Instead of transferring calls to several different offices or departments, operators worked to answer the questions themselves or directed the residents to the right city contacts as quickly as possible.”
Soon after, the Call Center also became the point of contact to report city-wide graffiti and its first service requests were generated for graffiti removal.
Today, in addition to graffiti reporting and removal, the Call Center provides assistance with more than 250 different types of service requests including missed trash pickups, street sweeping, animal control issues, illegal dumping, streetlight outages, code violations, and more.
“Each year, the number of customer contacts has grown exponentially as residents recognize that one call really does do it all,” Bacich said.
In 2011 alone, the center fielded over 200,000 contacts, which has expanded to include not only phone calls, but also emails and reports from citizens using interactive smartphone applications.
With the new smartphone apps, residents can report issues like potholes, street light outages, traffic signal problems, or water leaks by simply taking a photo and sending it in. Using the global positioning information from the phone and photo, Call Center representatives can easily forward the information to the correct city department for resolution.
“It’s all about improving the residents’ service delivery and quality”, Bacich said. “With more than one million customer contacts reached, and nearly half a million requests for services provided, the Call Center has proved to be the valuable asset that the city hoped it would be.”
For additional information about Riverside’s 311 Call Center, visit the city’s website at www.riversideca.gov
To download the free 311 Call Center app (available for iPhone, Android, or Blackberry), visit www.riversideca.gov/mobile/311
Monday, February 6, 2012
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