The recent economic news is just cause for citizens and businesses to think twice before making significant investments in their homes or businesses.  Government, especially local government, has to justify every investment of tax dollars, which come under even more scrutiny in this economic climate.

So, why should local government consider creating a new centralized contact center?  What can a city manager tell citizens and city councils or board of supervisors to justify the expenditure?

First, one of the reasons that the FCC allocated “311” to local governments was to reduce 911’s non-emergency calls.  Depending on the extent of the current problem your locality has with this, you can show that a reduction in this call volume can mean an increase in police and fire response times.

Another benefit is it allows you to create a knowledge base for your organization.  While you may have a few faqs for some processes, do you know the processes for everything your city does?  And are all the answers given to citizens correct?  Sometimes, when localities are creating these databases, they discover two or more answers for common questions, each of which has part of the correct answer.  Wouldn’t it be great to have all the correct answers in one place instead of someone’s head? And if you put it on both internal city drives and the internet, both city employees and citizens can find out the answers to questions without calling or emailing.

And speaking of processes, the creation of a centralized contact center is the perfect time to review your current service requests.  If you don’t have service response times or service level agreements (SLA) with each of your departments, this gives you the opportunity to review them and set an accurate yet flexible response time for each one.  So, if you know you can pick up a missed trash container within 24 hours, set the SLA for 48 hours so you can meet the response time and wow the customer who didn’t expect you for another day.  And using a customer relationship management software (CRM) allows you to track requests over time for each customer, from public works requests to parks requests to requests for the health department.  Having all the information in one place makes it easy to see what citizens have requested, the results and how to proceed with their next issue. Government can also see trends for neighborhoods, streets or even a single property that is experiencing multiple problems.

The benefit of having one place where all requests are submitted is that “holes” in service or duplication in services can be easily seen and fixed.  Likewise, department processes that don’t work well or are seen as broken by citizens or other departments surface first in the contact center.   Fixing these issues can result in considerable savings in staff time and resources.

Unified, unbiased reporting is an invaluable benefit of starting a contact center.  Reports can tell you if you need to devote more resources to an area of the city or allocate more staff for a particular city function.  You can see which departments are behind schedule, which have more resources than they need and what issue generates more calls and requests overall. 

Perhaps one of the most cost efficient initiatives, a centralized contact center can be staffed through reallocation of positions from other departments that already take calls.  Only a couple of new positions need to be created.  And with those staff, you can extend service hours for the public to call and email with questions and service requests.  Staggered shifts can allow the public to contact you when it is convenient for them.  While satisfaction with this can’t be measured in dollars or without a survey instrument, it is easier to sell a new program if you aren’t creating lots of new jobs and can increase government access.

Starting a new program or service is never easy, especially during these tough times but it can help if you know why it will benefit existing government services, future services and citizens.  Stop by the ICMA/AGCCE/311Synergy booth and find out more about the organizations there and how they can support you in your efforts.