Riverside, Calif. – What started out as another routine phone call to Riverside’s non-emergency 311 Call Center Monday afternoon - a report of graffiti that city crews will quickly remove - turned out to be the one millionth customer contact the one-stop information and services center has processed since going live in June 2004.
 

"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.”

Riverside activated its 311 Call Center to provide a centralized point of contact that could answer non-emergency questions on a wide variety of city services while taking pressure off of 911 emergency lines. Residents could simply dial 3-1-1 (or 826-5311) Monday to Friday from 7 a.m. to 7 p.m., or 8 a.m. to 5 p.m. on Saturdays and Sundays, to be connected to one of ten Call Center team members for assistance.

During its first six months of operations the Call Center quickly fielded 13,586 customer contacts. “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 residents to the right city contacts as quickly as possible.”

Soon after starting, 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 and 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 more than 206,220 contacts, which now includes phone calls, e-mails, and reports by citizens using interactive smart phone applications.

With the new phone applications, 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 forward the information on to the correct city department with a service request to correct the issue if needed.

These interactive reporting features have not only dramatically increased the number of service requests the Call Center has generated, over 471,000 to date, they’ve also helped increase departmental response times to making repairs. “It’s all about improving the resident’s 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.”

Additional information about Riverside’s 311 Call Center is available at www.riversideca.gov. To download the 311 Call Center App, available for iPhone, Android, or Blackberry, visit www.riversideca.gov/mobile/311