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March 22, 2013
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Those of you who have followed my journey these few months know that I was starting a 311 Contact Center for the City of Newport News. Well, we did a "soft" opening on Tuesday, March 19. It went very well for a first day, in part because of our "mock" go live the week prior. A mock go live is when you try to simulate the conditions of go live, as much as you can. In our case, we asked city departments to call and email us so we could test our software, test our phone system,
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January 29, 2013
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311/CRM Systems
I am at the fun part of starting a contact center. I've hired all the staff and we planned training. We are in the middle of it but I wanted to share what we are doing differently than when I was in Hampton. In Hampton, they brought in departments to speak and trained on customer service and of course, we are doing some of that too. However, we are trying to mix up our training to include tours of the city attractions, tours of development sites, ride-a-longs with Codes Compliance and Animal Control, having staff sit with 911 to see
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December 17, 2012
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311/CRM Systems
The topic of recruitment and staffing should be a no brainer in this economy, right? Wrong! In today's world of human resources, it can be just as frustrating to find the right people for your contact center, as it was when applicants were in shorter supply. I could write volumes about the various positions in a contact center and what kinds of things you should be looking for but today, I am just going to focus on some of the most important people in that center: call takers. And actually, "call taker" is a misnomer because in today's ccontact center (notice
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September 18, 2012
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311/CRM Systems
I won't rehash all the reasons why 311 contact centers should be where residents call, email or text to get information related to disasters. That is a topic that has been well covered in past discussions. But I will share with you some of the reasons that residents need to contact 311 for non emergency information or requests rather than the mayor, the city manager or your friend who works in public works. Although we all know calls will continue to go to these other sources, it actually doesn't help residents but rather hurts the overall response. Recently, we had
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July 25, 2012
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In looking at whether a city is ready to start a 311 contact center or any centralized contact center, these are the things they need to ask themselves and consider. Honest answers are important, as just because it is the "hot" thing to do or because you have money to purchase new software does not mean you automatically should do it. In fact, it can do more harm than good and in some cities, a 311 contact center has been started and then shut down (New Orleans and Detroit to name two). Although New Orleans did relaunch their contact center, it is
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June 26, 2012
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311/CRM Systems
I’m in the middle of the “hard” part of starting a contact center. I am delving deep into departments and divisions, talking about processes and service requests and what questions they ask and how long it takes them to complete tasks. It is the kind of thing that makes everyone, including me, stop and think. It is a good time to ask, “Is this the best way to do this? Why do we do it this way? Why does this request go first here and then here?” Doing this part of the process is a true test of the
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May 30, 2012
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311/CRM Systems
One of the workshops at the recent AGCCP Conference (formerly AGCCE) was about starting a new contact center. They reviewed all the things a jurisdiction should do to ensure their contact center was successful. That session should be posted on our new website within a few weeks (I’ll be sure to let you know when it is up) but it got me thinking about how Newport News, my new employer, made the decision to start a new contact center. In early 2010, the City Manager, Neil Morgan, put together a work group of employees from various city departments to
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May 4, 2012
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311/CRM Systems
Recently, I switched jobs. For 19 years, I was with the City of Hampton, first as a Program Director for the regional Foster Grandparent Program and then as Information Manager for the city’s 311 Call Center. I loved working at the 311 Call Center because no day was the same. There were always challenges and new things to do or work on and that was fun to me. Plus, it lead me to organizations like AGCCE and ICMA. But when I heard that the City of Newport News, a neighboring city, was going to start a 311 Contact
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February 27, 2012
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311/CRM Systems
Several years ago, I was searching for some sort of training that would be relevant to 311 Call Centers. I had taken previous training for call center managers but it was geared toward the private sector. When I brought up issues I was having in our government contact center, the others in the class looked at me like I was an alien from another planet. And I couldn’t relate to their emphasis on sales and profits. That is why I was thrilled to find AGCCE, the Association of Government Contact Center Employees.
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September 20, 2011
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Today is the last day that you can meet AGCCE representatives. Cindy Riordan, who works for the City of St. Louis and runs their centralized call center and DJ Russell, who works for the City of Hampton, Virginia and is the Information Manager for their 311 Call Center will be on hand today from 9 a.m. to 2 p.m. Citizen engagement can be done many different ways and government contact centers are a prime example of how you can get citizen input and help them feel part of the solutions to some of the problems of local
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September 16, 2011
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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
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