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The City of Calgary
The City of Calgary's 3-1-1 Program
Calgary is the first municipality in Canada to use 3-1-1 technology to revolutionize service to citizens
Challenge
When someone living in a Canadian municipality wants to request a building inspection or report a pothole needing to be fixed by the municipal government, what does the citizen do? Traditionally he or she contacted the town hall, in person or on the phone. In either case it was hard to find the right person or department to handle the problem. And once the request has been made, the citizen had no way to keep track of the request to ensure that it is resolved.
So it ever was. Municipal departments always operated in silos. Citizens were in the dark. They had little faith that the government, personified at the municipal level, was interested in serving them well or in improving service or efficiency.
A historic change is now taking place in the delivery of municipal government services and the efficiency of municipal organizations. The new era began with the official launch of a new kind of municipal program May 18, 2005, in the City of Calgary.
Solution
Calgary was the first municipal government in Canada to launch a customer-service-request (CSR) program called 3-1-1. The name comes from a three-digit telephone number designated for non-emergency services by the Canadian Radio-television and Telecommunications Commission.
When a citizen in Calgary calls that number - or accesses the 3-1-1 service from www.calgary.ca - the call is answered by someone whose job it is to respond to the citizen's request for information or service (other than 9-1-1 emergency services). It doesn't matter what department is involved. The citizen is given an identifier for the request, which is resolved either on the spot or within a promised length of time.
With a population of about 956,000, Calgary provides more than 500 distinct services to its residents. A sampling includes public transit, water treatment and distribution, recreation and leisure services, youth programming, animal services, solid waste collection and road maintenance.
All are accessible at any time through the 3-1-1 Operations Centre. Call-centre agents ensure that every customer request for information or service is logged, acted upon in a consistent, efficient manner, tracked, completed and reported on.
Behind this revolutionary approach to service is the CSR technology which, linked to the City's data warehouse, co-ordinates and electronically assigns work orders to field staff throughout the City. Within the CSR mapping function, the 3-1-1 system uses data from Calgary's geographic information system (GIS) to validate addresses, display locations on a map and analyze service-request patterns.
Monthly data is collected by the 3-1-1 measurements team and City business units. Regular reports go to senior management and elected officials. Reports reveal statistics and trends including service-request volumes and types, on-time performance indicators, call volumes to the 3-1-1 Operations Centre and how well the City is meeting service-delivery agreements in various operations.
Results
The 3-1-1 Program has achieved the following objectives:
- It delivers exceptional customer service to the public.
- It enables Calgary to track customers' demand for services. Data is linked to programs and can be used to make improvements.
- 3-1-1 aligns standards for excellent customer service across the City, from the corporate level through departments, business units and divisions.
- It removes internal organizational barriers that may impede customer response.
- Management uses 3-1-1 data to make resource allocation decisions and to improve service delivery.
An annual telephone survey conducted for the City by HarGroup Research of more than 800 Calgarians using the 3-1-1 telephone service showed that 86 per cent were moderately to completely satisfied.
The 3-1-1 program model has significantly reduced transfers and telephone run-around. The average number of transfers reported by Calgarians based on the experience of their last call to the City dropped to 1.34 in 2006 from 1.96 in 2005. The percentage of customers who recalled being transferred three or more times dropped to 11.5 per cent in 2006 from 25 per cent in 2005. First-call resolution of calls in 2006 was 80 per cent.
A month after the service went live, in June 2005, Calgary experienced the largest flood of the Bow River in 100 years. 3-1-1 measurements gave City departments a clear picture of service demands and corporate performance and, because the data could be mapped by the GIS system, officials could identify at a glance the worst-affected areas and prioritize emergency requirements.
Innovative use of Technology
The CSR application electronically opens service requests, dispenses resources to address customer requests, tracks work orders and resolves customer issues. The software works like this:
- The 3-1-1 call agents use CSR to electronically take in citizen's request for services or information.
- The 3-1-1 agent asks the customer a series of questions, which then tells CSR which operational area to assign the work.
- On the business unit side of things, staff log into CSR through an icon on their desktop to get work that has been assigned to them through the 3-1-1 Operations Centre.
- Once the job is completed, the staff member uses CSR to close the service request.
Much more than facilitating customer service, however, 3-1-1 enables unprecedented integration of municipal departments' information and work-flow processes. Business units run various CSR reports to review details of requests to improve work-flow management and service. As well, using CSR and the corporation's data warehouse, location or spatial information can be compiled and exported into the GIS to map the locations of requested City services.
A 2006 CIPA Winner!
For its exceptional application of information technology to transform processes and bring benefits to stakeholders, the City of Calgary has been awarded a 2006 CIPA Silver Award of Excellence in the Customer Care, Not For Profit category.
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