Morrisroe explains service level agreements and resolution descriptions

Thank you for the question.

I was also not there in 2003, but came shortly after.

So I can't speak to the very beginning.

But I think there's three or four things that I can share that gets to what you're asking.

But on an intake side, if I can do that first, there's a couple of things that happen, whether you're self-serving through the mobile app or online or whether you're talking to a call center representative.

There's two key things that you'll get what we call the expectation.

Right.

And matter of fact, on the online, it says what happens next.

And that's a description of what happens next, which agency is going to respond and what the typical.

turnaround time is or the due date to use that term.

Technically, we call those service level agreements.

So those are two things that happen on any service request interaction.

Then in addition to that, all the service level agreements that an agency that agencies have really with the city, right, with the public are available on open data.

There's a list called 311 SLA.

So for every complaint, every complaint type, it will say what's the expected time to resolve.

That can be hours for some dire situations.

It can be days.

And in some cases, it can be longer than that because there are seasonal cycles.

So that's available.

And then the other piece that talks to, I believe, what you're...

Talking to is the aforementioned RSAT dashboard, where a customer can say, I opened this service request.

The agency told me, here's the status.

I get a request.

I can now say whether it is or not.

And then that customer's point of view may be different than the agency's point of view.

One of the things we try to do is define that, what does that mean?

So in the service request that the customer gets an update on, if they...

Take the confirmation number if they get it emailed to them or if they call and look it up.

We have what we call a resolution description.

It's a kind of a field and it's got a literal in it.

Some of those do date back to 20 years.

So there's a work effort that started a couple of years ago that we tried to do.

We've done it successfully with NYPD, is to refine.

those resolution descriptions, frankly, put them into plain language terms so the public can actually understand what the city is saying.

So that's something that has, we believe, has helped.

It's hard to get data on that, but we believe it's helped to help just clarify that situation.

Like, what does this mean?

What does this agency response mean?

So those are a number of things we do where we can control that.

And just all under the guise of trying to make it more informative and more understanding to the customer.