By Stephanie Kanowitz
GCN
Right now, when residents contact the Tulsa, Okla., Customer Care Center, using any of several dozen phone numbers, they get an automated response asking them to press a number corresponding to their need. That routes the call to the right agent for the job, and that agent uses five pieces of software to track down the answer or set up a work order. All work orders go to a single administrative agent who reviews them and creates official orders.
In July, however, residents will be able to use a new 311 system to get non-emergency help via phone, text message or web forms, even setting up service requests themselves. What’s more, 311 agents will use a single platform to answer questions and submit work orders. The result is a consolidation of customer services across some 15 different municipal departments.
“Once 311 goes live and we promote that to the community, we’re going to be getting phone calls into our contact center that were going to other department groups across the city,” said Michael Radoff, center director. “We don’t want to just be a transferring service. We want to be able to answer those calls and drive first-call resolution as high as we possibly can.”
Because this system is completely new, Radoff and his team had to start from scratch. For the 311 element, they spent almost a year on contracting with about 10 telephony providers -- including AT&T, Cox Communications and Windstream Communications -- that will participate in the 311 conversion. Next, they had to make a bidirectional map to set up phone switches, which took 12 to 15 months.
To consolidate the software, the city tapped LAGAN Enterprise from KANA, part of Verint. It will replace the Lockheed Martin Intranet Quorum service order tool, and eventually another system that handles only code violations. For questions related to the municipal courts, which gets the highest call volume, the city will continue to use JURIS, the Tulsa Municipal Court Information System. JURIS was developed and is maintained by the Tulsa Police Department’s Systems Development and Support team.
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