City celebrating successful first year for its 311 Call Centre

By Kalinowski, Tim on March 13, 2020.

Customer service manager Cathy Gejdos watches Teri Trotter deal with a call at the Citys 311 Call Centre, as the service marked its one year anniversary earlier this week. Herald photo by Ian Martens @IMartensHerald

Tim Kalinowski

Lethbridge Herald

tkalinowski@lethbridgeherald.com

The old saying goes: “You can’t fight city hall.” But the 311 Call Centre is making it a little easier to get along with city hall by offering a one-stop shop where residents can go to get their answers on various City of Lethbridge programs and services.

The 311 Call Centre celebrated one year of operating within the city on Wednesday.

“I think we launched the service a year ago not really knowing exactly what to expect from the community, and it has been great to see how the community has embraced the 311 service,” explained City of Lethbridge corporate customer service manager Travis Hillier. “We have taken well over 100,000 calls in the past year about all City programs and services, and the response from the community has been very positive.”

Hillier said he is particularly proud of the call centre’s success rate at answering people’s questions and inquiries.

“One of the big things is the 311 call centre has actually been able to answer 86 per cent of the calls that have come in right here; meaning we have only had to transfer 14 per cent of the people who called in,” he stated. “That’s really great to see the knowledge base we have been able to build within the contact centre here.”

Hillier hoped the 311 Call Centre has helped lessen residents’ frustrations and provided a positive experience for all those who have called in during the past year.

“The whole goal of 311 is really to make the City (bureaucracy) easier to navigate and make it more accessible,” he said.

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