WINNIPEG – If you have to call 311, you will likely have to wait on hold longer now than ever before with the city service.
An audit into the 311 Contact Centre found the average wait time for the first six months of 2013 was 1 minute 45 seconds. That is up significantly from 2012 where a caller waited an average of 1 minute 22 seconds before his or her call was picked up.
When 311 was launched in 2009 the city had wanted 80 per cent of calls to be answered within 30 seconds.
The audit, which will be presented to the Executive Policy Committee later this week, says that target is not realistic. It found that standard was only met 22 per cent of the time.
For that target to be more achievable, the audit estimates another 20 customer service representatives (CSR) would have to be hired. At the time of the audit there were 67 CSRs.
In 2013 the 311 centre handled approximately 1.6 million calls. Of those the audit found 44 per cent or 710,592 calls were relating to transit. Of those calls, 658,757 were inquiring about a bus schedule. Those calls could have been handled by existing services including Navigo and Telebus.
The audit recommends using Interactive Voice Response technology to route calls for bus schedules to the proper channel so staff could be freed up to answer other calls. It is suggested this would make the wait time targets more manageable.
Calls relating to the Water and Waste department account for 17 per cent of all 311 calls with garbage pickup concerns being the most frequent concerns.
Around 11 per cent of 311 calls are for Public Works department concerns. The most common reason is street maintenance.
The yearly budget for 311 is around $4.949 million in 2013. The service was over budget for that year by $218,000 because of an increase in calls relating to discoloured water and recycling collection.
The audit says the cost per minute in 2012 worked out to be $0.68
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