Seattle City Councilmember Bruce Harrell

I presented legislation today, 9/28/09, at Full Council to improve the City’s response to information and service requests from the public. The Council approved Council Bill 116638, lifting a budget proviso restricting expenditures in the 2009 budget for a Constituent Relationship Management (CRM) System. A CRM System is a central management system for recording, assigning, tracking, and reporting of customer service requests from the public. It will improve the City’s customer service system in receiving constituents’ requests, expedite assignment to the appropriate city personnel, and allow the constituent to track the progress of the request and ensure that the request was completed.

Annually, the City of Seattle receives millions of phone calls, emails, and thousands of service requests from the Web. Currently, each department manages service requests independently, with various tracking and standards. The current un-centralized system lacked adequate performance data needed to improve customer service. The new system will provide analytics regarding service requests and response times; as a result, the City can identify protocols and procedures to improve customer service response.

The public currently has several ways to contact the city for information and service requests:

1) Call 684-CITY (2489)
2) Visit www.Seattle.gov/Customerservice
3) Locate the appropriate department from the online city service directory at http://www.seattle.gov/html/citizen/departments.htm
4) Email or call a Councilmember
5) Email or call city employees from the online city directory at http://www.seattle.gov/directory/.

The new CRM system will improve: 1) intake time for constituent requests, 2) the online web request system—constituents will obtain a tracking number and be able to track and follow up on the status of their requests, 3) provide analytics on constituents’ requests and how the city responds—allowing staff to identify what the City can do to improve response, and 4) provide a knowledge base for city staff to determine whether a similar issue has occurred before and how it was resolved previously—eliminating wasted time on work duplication.

The phase 1 rollout for the summer of 2010 includes:

1) Replacement of the current Intranet Quorum (IQ) system in city departments.
2) Implement the new CRM system for the Customer Service Bureau.
3) Integrate requests for a) Information, suggestions, complaints, b) abandoned vehicles reporting, c) graffiti reporting, and d) illegal dumping reporting into new CRM system.
4) Integrate new CRM system with the “My.Seattle.Gov” Public Engagement Portal—providing a one-stop web portal for service requests.

The new CRM system is available for expansion and below is a list of service requests we will consider in the future for centralization in the CRM system:

1) Noise complaints.
2) Street maintenance
3) Streetlight outages
4) Water quality complaints
5) Missed garbage collections
6) Public disclosure requests.
7) Provide integration with Mobile Apps so the public can report a problem from a compatible mobile phone.

By implementing and moving towards a citywide CRM system, the City will improve customer service responses by automating processes to help constituents get faster and more effective responses. With scorecard data regarding the constituents’ customer service experience, the City can identify what it can do to improve service response and also appropriately reduce costs if data shows that resources are inappropriately allocated. The new CRM system is compatible with a 311 system if the City decides to implement a complete 311 system down the road. While this new CRM system is not the complete full-fledged 311 system in the amount of $9 or $35 million in other cities, the public should see noticeable differences in the City’s response to requests when contacting the City.

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