Vancouver 311 - Where are you?
Next month Vancouver’s 311 Contact Centre is scheduled to go live 24 hours a days, 7 days a week, 365 days a year.
Since February all calls going to the city hall switchboard have been redirected to the the 311 Contact Centre located at 1800 Spyglass Place. I have had to call the city a few times since the contact centre was launched and the Citizen Service Representatives, as they are called, have been quite effective at directing my calls to the right area or person. In fact, if they are not sure they are sending me to the right place they stay with me until I am connected to the right person.
Yet the city has not provided any advertising or promotion for what will become a fantastic service designed for residents and can be quite a help for visitors too during the 2010 Olympics.
However, the city’s webpage set aside for the 311 service is still just an empty page with a “coming soon” announcement:
Coming Soon: “Vancouver 311″
“Vancouver 311″ is a centralized 311 service that will provide citizens with ready access to most City information and non-emergency services by phone.
In the meantime you can learn more about 3-1-1 dialing by reading through the 3-1-1 Vancouver category on this site and you can check out the technology and some information about other cities who are using 311, including Winnipeg which was the latest Canadian city to launch the service last January.
Visit Lagan, the company which designed Vancouver’s 3-1-1 Contact Centre system: Lagan 311
Read the news release from September 2008 about the Lagan 3-1-1 system:
Vancouver Embraces Lagan 311 to Deliver a “Customer First” Oriented Service Culture