City Manager Fidel Maltez is working to make sure resident requests and questions are answered in a timely manner and by the appropriate employees.
At Monday night’s city council meeting, Maltez responded to a council request asking that every department ensure that at least one employee is available to answer phone calls.
“Currently, all departments have at least one employee that is answering calls during City Hall operating hours,” stated Maltez. “Following this Council Order, our team spoke to Department Heads to reiterate the importance of making staff available to the public in order to answer any specific or urgent questions.”
Several city departments have their main phone line routed to the city’s 311 call center as an efficiency measure, according to Maltez.
“One example is the City Clerk’s Office,” stated Maltez. “This approach is particularly effective during the department’s busy seasons including elections and parking renewal time. Due to the high volume of in person visitors the office experiences, using 311 as the main line for this department enables the City Clerk to keep the counter actively staffed so the lines move in an efficient and effective manner to decrease resident frustration.”
The city manager said the 311 Department is able to answer many questions regarding city services, ranging from hours of operation to tax inquiries and public works requests. Additionally, Maltez said the 311 operators are trained to escalate questions they cannot answer to the necessary department.
“This is especially true for complex circumstances that require an in-depth conversation with the experts who are our departmental staff,” stated Maltez. “The 311 operators use a work order system called QAlert to assign tickets to Departments which our Director of Constituent Services monitors for successful completion.”
In the one month that the department has been fully staffed, Maltez said he has seen a marked difference in the amount of successfully completed tickets.
“We thank the Council and our residents for their patience as we finalize the training of these employees and optimize our internal process,” said Maltez. “I have tasked our Director of Constituent Services, Bernabe Rodriguez, with ensuring that 311 provides the best customer service experience to our residents.”
District 6 Councilor Giovanni Recupero thanked Maltez for addressing the issue.
“That’s a good thing if people can’t get answers through 311, they can go to the department,” said Recupero. “So it’s a good thing in two ways, it helps 311 and it helps the people (not getting answers) from 311. Because there are people who don’t want answers from 311, they want to talk to the departments.”