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Don’t keep us hanging on!
In the fourth article in his international series, Professor Robin Hambleton argues for the introduction of a non-emergency telephone number, modelled on US experience. Could this work in the UK? Read the article and tell us what you think.
When it comes to service responsiveness over the phone the public sector puts the private sector to shame. The contest is not even close.
In an emergency you can dial 999 anywhere in the country and get instant access to outstanding services within seconds. This responsiveness outperforms the very best in the private sector on four counts.
First, it is a three-digit number. You can remember it and dial it without having to waste time looking up the number.
Second, there are no choices to make. Forget about an automated voice saying: “Please choose from the following options. If you need the police service, press 1. If you need the fire service, press 2…”.
At an anecdotal level we all have our experiences of wasting time in 'phone tree hell'. We already know, even without reading the research, that phone trees discourage users from accessing needed services. The 999 service recognises that users don’t want choices, they want help.
Third, someone answers the phone real fast. Forget about: “You are now in a queue and your call will be answered shortly” or, worse than that, “All our customer service lines are busy, please try later”.
Fourth, a professionally-trained phone operator helps you immediately. Forget about: “Please hold while I check whether we can deal with this”.
Some will say: “Fair enough. You are right to say that the private sector is way off the pace when compared with our 999 telephone system, but this is our national emergency number. Local authorities cannot possibly deliver this outstanding quality of service.” Wrong answer.
The 311 service in Chicago
In the USA the national emergency number is 911. This covers ambulance, fire and police – like 999 in the UK. In many cities – and here I will highlight Chicago’s experience as I lived there and used it for five years – there is a 311 non-emergency number operating alongside 911.
From personal experience, I can confirm that in Chicago if you want information about public services or you need to request a non-emergency service, all you do is dial 311 – any time, night or day. You will speak straight away to someone who can help you. That’s it.
You don’t speak English? Don’t worry. The 311 operators have studied key phrases in 25 languages – enough to access a language bank and request the services of a qualified translator in some 40 languages.
Behind this breathtaking simplicity is a prize-winning combination of well-trained people and up-to-date technology. First, there is a team of 77 highly-trained operators who strive to make sure every caller gets a prompt, courteous and helpful response.
Headed by Phillip Hampton, a director with extensive community relations experience in the Chicago public school system, the team works in a spacious call centre. The office is well designed and phone operators are enthusiastic and committed.
Second, the 311 staff members are supported by a sophisticated computer system that routes requests electronically to the relevant department to take the necessary action. More than that, this system enables supervisors to monitor the progress of any given job and deal quickly with any problems that might be causing delay.
What does the Chicago 311 service do?
In 2007 the 311 service dealt with a record 4.4 million calls. About half of these – around 2.2 million – were requests for information and were dealt with then and there.
When is the date and time of the next community safety meeting in my neighbourhood? What after-school programmes are available at my children’s school? What’s this I hear about Lake Shore Drive being closed to vehicles one coming Sunday so that cyclists can ‘Bike the drive’?
These are the kinds of questions that will be answered in seconds by the 311 staff as the information is only a keystroke away. It is stored in the well-designed computerised information system.
What about the other calls – the 2.2 million service requests? For example, can you fix the broken street light at the corner of my street? Do you know about the offensive graffiti scribbled on the underpass? I’m worried about the kid who lives a few doors away – he seems to have a lot of bruises – can you investigate please?
The 311 service request and delivery process
- A service request is created and routed automatically to the appropriate department.
- The caller receives a service request number to simplify follow-up.
- A checklist of steps to resolve the problem is generated.
- The checklist is translated into work orders or other appropriate action.
- City staff respond to the request.
- The response is monitored and any additional activities are assigned as needed.
What about those citizens who don’t call the 311 number, but instead call a local authority department directly? Will this create confusion and duplicate action? No. Whoever answers the phone in any department simply enters the request into the system and it is handled in the same way as requests made to the 311 number. Citizens can also, of course, make service requests online.
311 across the USA
The 311 rapid response service is not limited to Chicago. Baltimore Police Department pioneered the idea of a simple non-emergency 311 helpline in the early 1990s. When President Bill Clinton endorsed the approach in a campaign speech in 1996, a number of elected mayors picked up on the model. 311 is now in operation in a large number of US cities – from New York to Los Angeles and from Detroit to Houston.
However, it is fair to say that the City of Chicago provides a particularly good example. First, it is probably one of the largest 311 systems in the country. The system receives over 12,000 service requests on each weekday and tracks more than 500 types of service request.
The International City/County Management Association (ICMA), based in Washington DC, has recently carried out the first ever national study of 311 and related customer service technology used by local government in the USA. This provides a useful picture of the barriers encountered in introducing a 311 service, as well as insights into the benefits. Please refer to the bibliography for this article to find out more.
The UK 101 service
The good news is that officials from the UK visited Chicago and other cities four or five years ago to examine experience with the 311 system. The Home Office took a real interest and, by working with forward-looking councils and police authorities, created a three-digit non-emergency number for community safety matters – 101.
The five ‘pilot’ areas that pioneered the 101 service in 2006 are:
- Cardiff
- Hampshire and the Isle of Wight
- Leicester City, Rutland, Melton and Harborough
- Northumberland and Tyne and Wear
- Sheffield.
The evidence suggests that these ‘pilots’ have been very successful. As Peter Coates, the 101 manager in Sunderland puts it:
“Easy convenient access equals swifter reporting and higher service uptake.”
He stresses the fact that significant savings can accrue by heading off problems before they become really expensive to deal with.
For example, last autumn the Northumbria 101 service received hundreds of phone calls about the building of illegal bonfires. The councils were able to remove these bonfires before they were lit and this dramatically reduced the number of fire service call-outs on 5 November. It also avoided many confrontations that would have required expensive police intervention had the fires been lit.
Official evaluation reports on the 101 pilots suggest that they have been hugely successful and very popular. Clearly the service helps local authorities work more effectively and efficiently. Problems can be identified more quickly and the organisational response can be more businesslike.
The bad news is that the Home Office decided to withdraw funding from the 101 pilots and two have now ceased to operate.
This, surely, is short sighted. In fairness, central government will claim that it has not actually ‘closed down’ the 101 service. But this is to miss the point. By starving the pilots of resources and by failing to bring the different arms of government together to push ahead with the introduction of a national 101 service, central government appears to be standing in the way of citizen-friendly public service reform.
This is despite the fact that it is difficult to imagine a public service initiative that more closely serves the public transformation agenda mapped out by Sir David Varney, the Prime Minister’s Cabinet Office Adviser on these matters.
It should be noted that, important as it is, 101 is less ambitious than the US 311. This is because the service is restricted to eight main areas:
- vandalism, graffiti and other deliberate damage
- noise nuisance
- threatening or abusive behaviour
- abandoned vehicles
- dumping and fly-tipping
- drunk and rowdy behaviour
- drug-related anti-social behaviour
- broken street lighting.
The US 311 service covers all these areas but also many others. Indeed, the whole idea of 311 is that callers will receive assistance regardless of the nature of their non-emergency call.
Lessons for the UK
The US 311 telephone service has several strengths. First, it has the four ‘service encounter’ qualities we associate with the 999 service mentioned earlier – short number, no choices, a person and not a recorded voice to speak to, and help straight away. In this model the service encounter is entirely shaped by the needs of the caller, not the organisation. Clearly this is what personalised citizen-friendly services need to be like.
Second, it enables problems to be tackled early with the result that investment in 311 saves the costs associated with delayed intervention. For example, a 311 call that triggers the early repair of a pothole in the road can avoid the costs associated with a potential accident caused by the unrepaired pothole.
Third, the 311 system enables managers not only to respond quickly to service users but also to know when tasks have been completed. It is a sophisticated management tool and, because it is transparent, it is easy to trace the progress of any request. This is good news for managers, delivery teams and 311 frontline staff as well as those making requests.
Fourth – and this is what makes the service particularly attractive to the police, fire and health departments – is that the system diverts non-emergency calls from the 911 emergency number. This enables those services to concentrate their efforts more effectively on urgent and, at times, life and death tasks. The national survey by ICMA of 311 jurisdictions, which measured non-emergency calls to 911, found that 43 per cent reported a significant decrease in such calls after a 311 service was set up.
Fifth, the 311 service is very popular with citizens. At a time when there is so much concern in the UK about the credibility gap between government and citizens this is a particularly important point.
The US experience with 311 suggests that the introduction of a national 101 service as soon as possible could give a rocket boost to Prime Minister Gordon Brown’s desire to make the experience of public services more ‘personalised’ as well as much more cost effective.
Key lessons
- A three-digit number giving immediate access to an operator is the key to winning public support.
- A 311 or 101 service will save money as costs arising from delayed interventions are erased.
- The information system underpinning 311 provides for businesslike and transparent management.
- A national non-emergency number would take unwarranted calls off 999.
- A three-digit number backed by a high-quality response is very popular with citizens.
Bibliography and other relevant resources
Read a brief synopsis of the sources drawn on for this article. Plus, discover other useful resources relating to the development of citizen-friendly services.
About the author
Robin Hambleton is Professor of City Leadership in the Faculty of Environment and Technology at the University of the West of England, Bristol. He is also Director of Urban Answers, an urban consultancy based in Bristol.
Your comments
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This is a good idea but I wonder how it would work in practice in a two-tier authority - if it was left to the district councils there would be overlap between districts, if it was left to the county council there is a danger it becomes too centralised.
Vicky on 09 Jun 2008
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Hi Vicky,
Northumbria 101 covers 2 tier auths in Northumberland plus Tyne & Wear Mets. I think if you read FOSS report on Northumbria 101 your question will be fully answered.
The point i'd like to make is the technology is already in place to cover all UK but what is missing is the desire to do so.
Cheers mikemike short on 10 Jun 2008
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Of course, it could work here. I'd also like to point out that there are some other advantages to the system than the important ones Professor Hambleton points out. Key to that is the benefit to performance management. The City of Chicago was able to use the valuable customer insight they gained to improve performance and mitigate emergencies. I describe a bit about that in a blog entry here:
http://ideapolicy.wordpress.com/2008/06/06/get-the-411-with-the-101-247/
We're also discussing some of these issues in an online conference on customer insight which runs from 10 to 20 June on the IDeA's Communities of Practice website: http://www.idea.gov.uk/idk/core/page.do?pageId=8286992Ingrid Koehler on 10 Jun 2008
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the Chicago idea seems like a very good thing but I am not sure about the funding. The government couldnt even keep the 101 service. This always upset when you see idea such 101 goes into "flames"-the Chicago idea will only be another 101 which wont last..starving 101 of resources is not a good.to be honest, politicians dont listen.
christian on 10 Jun 2008
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The American 311 non-emergency public services phone idea is an excellent one that has application beyond local government services alone. In 2005 the 'Citizen Redress' report by the National Audit Office called for the creation of just such a service at UK and English central government level, but the government response was unfortunately complete inacitvity. In 2008 the call for a central enquiry/complaints phone number service was repeated in an excellent report from the Select Committee on Public Administration 'When Citizens Complain'.
The more general and inclusive these easy public access schemes are the better - in New York (for instance) the 311 service coveres multiple city and state-level services. What will not work well is the heavily siloed Home Office 101 version because citizens' problems are not neatly packaged with central or local, or Dept X or Dept Y labels. So it would be great if local government could help show central government services how to respond imaginatively to these kinds of issues.Patrick Dunleavy (LSE) on 10 Jun 2008
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The service worked brilliantly here before it was withdrawn. I used it as a consumer, not a professional. Pathetic debates about jurisdiction, tiers of council, overlap etc are irrelevant. Central government commitment is crucial and that is not forthcoming, why not? Oh is there another short-term fad they're throwing money at? Surely not.
Spooney on 11 Jun 2008
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Surely the outcome of the 101 pilots shows exactly why this doesn't work in the UK - because central government can't break down its silos to support genuine customer focus. I suspect (don't know for sure) that in Chicago, the police and fire departments are run by local government, so they don't need to deal with national government structures. Maybe local government here is now getting to the point where it could lead this sort of initiative and gain the cooperation of nationally controlled local services, through LSPs, LAAs, MAAs. Maybe in some cases the systems supporting joined-up customer service within local authorities will be extensible to those partners to support something like the Chicago arrangements, and the understanding of costs and benefits that's coming from efficiency work will enable them to justify the further investment needed. But if that happens it will be serendipitous, from central government's viewpoint at least.
Peter Thomson on 11 Jun 2008
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It sounds a good idea, in fact a very good idea, but as a funding officer within the voluntary sector I do not see an obvious pot of money to implement such a scheme.
How can we move it forward? Get a major sponsor (or more) on board? It needs all local authorities to get behind it. I don't know the answer to this one.Barbara Lawton on 11 Jun 2008
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The hardest test for such a number would be in London, where so many services are provided across 32 boroughs, the GLA, Met and LFCDA. It would be a seriously impressive CRM package that handled that little lot.
Nice idea, though. As a citizen, I'd like it a lot. Unfortunately making it work could end up with an ICT fiasco not unlike the NHS IT programme.Joseph Knappett on 11 Jun 2008
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The problem is cost, most proposals and pilots I've seen appear to be a separate layer based on top of a narrow range of existing services. In New York the 311 service was politically driven to improve access rather than cost driven. In the UK as soon as the cash strapped LAs have to bear the cost themselves then I suspect the schemes will be shelved.
My own view is that if 101(SNEN - Single Non Emergency Number) was treated as a "Business Change" project across all LA services, and the pilot budgets allocated accordingly, then it would not only deliver obvious tangible benefits (many mentioned above) but also deliver considerable "shared services" efficiency savings.
btw - There is currently a low level pilot of 101 in London based on 2 Boroughs driven by the GLA. 101 is supported by both the previous Mayor and the current one. SNEN in London is a distinct possibility.Bill Phillips on 11 Jun 2008
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The benefits outlined above clearly make the idea very appealing to the public and it ought to be very appealing to elected politicians. The issue I have though is in relation to latent demand. The more accessible services are the more you unleash that demand. Five years ago during a period of expansion in the public sector it would have made perfect sense to move towards that model, but with budgets now contracting all the benefits in terms of public trust and confidence that would accrue from being more accessible would be lost as a result of a lack of response. Perhaps the way forward is to move into a planning phase now so that roll out can take place quickly once public finances allow.
ICB on 11 Jun 2008
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ICB makes an important point - services behind the 101 system need to be sufficiently robust to cope with the inevitable increase in requests. As an example, colleagues of mine dealing with noise nuisance in Cardiff saw a massive increase in the number of noise nuisance complaints being made following the introduction of 101. In many ways this was a good thing - more people were able to make use of the service because they could actually speak to someone at the time the incident was occurring - and there was a similar increase in the number of cases where formal action was taken to address the problem, so at least a good proportion of the 'new' service requests were about genuine issues, not just frivolous or non-actionable complaints.
But that first year or so had a huge impact on the team delivering the actual service receiving the referrals from the 101 service, stretching them to breaking point. Cardiff is now introducing a limited out-of-hours noise nuisance team, mainly as a response to the evidence of need provided by 101, and I have no doubt that a much better service is now provided overall.
But if services aren't supported to be able to cope with such increased demand, then as already stated, we will lose any potential benefits due to failure to respond adequately.Alastair Tomlinson on 12 Jun 2008
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Funding is always key. Our City Operator program in Sacramento, California, is adding a 311 component. It is being implemented using existing staff resources, some of whom were transferred from various departments to the call center. They expect to see substantial savings through increased use of technology. Under the old system, people were often transferred up to four times before reaching the right department. Eliminating these unnecessary transfers will doubtless save money and improve customer service. See their website: http://www.cityofsacramento.org/generalservices/311_pages/
Thomas Pace on 14 Jun 2008
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I, along with several of my neighbours, called the 101 service to report anti-social behaviour in our area. It took time to get through and the calls were time-consuming but we wanted to do our bit. Imagine our dismay when we found out from the police at our residents' meetings that they had no record of the calls. Perhaps it was problems like this that contributed to the withdrawal of the funding and not the wickedness of the government?
Jane Byrne on 15 Jun 2008
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