When you ask Calgarians about their 311 experiences, you get a flood of responses – with many around communication about how service requests are closed.
That’s an area the City of Calgary wants to address with Calgarians expressing frustration with what a “closed” 311 service request really means. An update on this work was provided in a briefing note included with the Executive Committee agenda at the May 14 meeting.
LiveWire Calgary put a call out to people for their experiences with the Calgary 311 system, particularly around the Service Request (SR) being closed, but work not being done. Rather than singling out one specific instance, all of the responses were provided.
They were generally summed up, however, by the response of Sean Carter.
“Biggest complaint: They ‘close’ requests before the work is completed which is both frustrating and confusing,” Carter wrote in response.
“They need to change that.”
Ward 10 Coun. Andre Chabot said more should be done to communicate effectively with citizens when their service requests are initiated.
“What I’ve heard from residents is that they’ll call in for a pothole, as an example, and then and then they get an SR number and they follow up on the SR and then (the city) says, ‘oh, it’s been closed,’” Chabot said.
“And then (citizens) say, but the pothole is not fixed.”
There’s a back and forth over the timing of the pothole fill, mixed with citizen patience until the citizen calls his office back to say the work still hasn’t been done. He said that’s when the city tells his office that a work order has been issued, and the work might be planned for months down the road.
“Many times, it misses that season, and it doesn’t get followed up, at least not proactively in the following season,” he said.
“So, how do we make sure that those SRs are followed through properly, that there are actions, and that we don’t take the SR off the books.”
Common definition of ‘closed’
Calgary’s 311 system takes nearly one million calls annually, connecting Calgarians with various front-line services. According to the most recent citizen satisfaction survey (2024 Spring Survey), 90 per cent of Calgarians were either very satisfied or somewhat satisfied with the service.
In 2021, an audit report on Calgary’s 311 system was delivered, showing significant gaps in the system – including confusion around a closed Service Request.
“There is an inconsistent approach across The City regarding whether closing an SR in the 311 system represents the resolution of a citizen’s request, and whether the citizen can track their request through to resolution,” read the report.
The SR outcome (resolution) is a high priority to the citizen and impacts their perception of the effectiveness of the response.”
Chris Stewart, director Corporate Planning and Performance with the City of Calgary, has been coordinating the 311 response improvements. She said that 311 can be a benefit to Calgarians, but also a source of frustration. To that end, Stewart said they’ve launched a new program to improve the customer experience.
“In particular, what we're focused on is reducing the inconsistency and the uncertainty for Calgarians by keeping them better informed about the progress of a service request and the resolution of that request in the end, and in particular by giving them a more accurate status update when their service request is closed,” she told LWC.
Stewart said there are nearly 500 different types of Service Requests handled by Calgary 311. To start, they will be taking a few keys areas, those with the highest call volumes, and putting in place solutions. Those will be streetlight maintenance, waste and recycling and catch basins.
One aspect that has been addressed is the creation of a common definition of what “closed” really means on a Service Request.
Getting everyone on board
Stewart said that with several different business units fielding Service Requests, it’s going to take time to get everyone using the new definition.
“So, a key element of this is this job training that we need to do to make sure everyone's aware of this new definition and applying it in the right way,” she said.
“But once we've got that in place that should go a long way to addressing that frustration that we've heard from Calgarians and improving their experience.”
They’ll also be looking at improving two other key areas. First, they’ll be working with different business units and their respective contractors to improve the text that’s added to Service Requests with information on how work is progressing on that file.
“I think that will go a long way to tackling some of the expectation management and getting back to people with the information that they want, rather than seeing it more as an internal to the thing for the benefit of staff,” Stewart said.
They’ve also heard about frustration around the closure of Service Requests just because it’s been transferred over to the respective business unit. Stewart said one of the challenges in that regard is consistency – it doesn’t happen in every business unit.
Coun. Chabot said there’s a big disconnect there. Residents have filed 311 requests, get transferred to a different business unit and those business units don’t provide Service Request numbers. Often when a complaint isn’t followed through it results in another call and another service request created. Chabot would like to see a central repository for 311 Service Requests.
“How do we make sure that it's all well integrated because again, to my point, we could be creating so much redundancy and lose efficiency by not having fully integrated,” he said.
It’s even been suggested that citizens get to sign off when a Service Request is complete.
Stewart said the challenge with that is the City and citizens may not always agree on what closed is, and in many cases, the request isn’t within their jurisdiction. She said their approach is to continue better communicating throughout the process.
The City of Calgary’s revamp of the 311 system has been divided into five phases, with the expected completion by the end of 2025.
