Call Center Scheduling Featured Article
The Benefits of Non-Emergency 311 Call Centers
Cities across the U.S. are electing to launch 311 call centers, or non-emergency contact centers, as a better way to communicate with their citizenry. It’s a great way to keep non-emergency calls off 911 lines and disseminate municipal information in a timely and convenient way.
The latest 311 call center project, Manatee County, Florida, has been launched as an effort to reduce emergency call center call and contact volumes by providing a new, non-emergency line for residents. In recent years, the county had seen an uptick in non-essential calls to emergency services.
"We see so much of it that it’s kind of routine,” Manatee County dispatcher Mike Turner told local news channel Fox 13. “We have people who’ve called up to ask what time it is. What the date is. Or just general complaints about service in a restaurant," he said.
The 311 call center concept was developed by the Association of the Public Communication Officials and the FCC (News - Alert) as a way to shift non-emergency calls off the 911 system. The benefits of a 311 contact center include:
- Improved customer service by providing constituents with one convenient number to call for city services including non-emergency police issues.
- Providing city or county officials with detailed performance metrics on how efficiently calls for services are being handled by the city departments.
- Spotting trends in citizen questions and concerns early to allow staff and officials to take corrective action before problems become major issues and learning more about citizens needs based on an analysis of requests for service.
- Elevating citizens' perception of the city's service delivery and improving citizen satisfaction and communications for city services.
- Eliminating administrative activities that add no value, such as redundant keying, call transferring and reconciling of data within all city or county departments.
- Making information more readily available to the public and the business community.
- Giving citizens a choice of communication channels (self-service, telephone, voice response, web-based, remote site, direct customer contact) by providing citizens access anytime and in many locations.
- Providing a knowledge base for citizen contact by predefining and establishing general citizen information.
- Enabling employees to deliver better customer services to callers with the appropriate tools, processes and information.
Edited by Maurice Nagle