By Joseph A. Curtatone

(The opinions and views expressed in the commentaries and letters to the Editor of The Somerville Times belong solely to the authors and do not reflect the views or opinions of The Somerville Times, its staff or publishers)

Twenty seconds: That figure represents the time within which our 311 customer service representatives strive to answer resident calls, and 79 percent of the time they achieve that goal. This is a notable feat considering that Somerville 311 is one of the smallest constituent service centers in the country, but nationally 78 percent of 311 calls take up to 30 seconds before they are answered. Perhaps this is made even more impressive when considering the more than 90,000 service and information requests 311 responded to and resolved in 2016.

With the high number of inquiries, we understandably respond to a wide range of requests. Of course we hear from you about day-to-day services and issues like trash pickup, permit requests, construction updates, and parking questions (especially with the change in snow emergency parking to the even side of the street for this season). But in 2016, we also heard from you regarding things like Christmas trees and cute animals – sometimes when you least suspect them.

Our customer service representatives say that receiving calls about Christmas trees is not out of the ordinary. The City mulches discarded trees, so 311 typically receives numerous calls during January or February inquiring about tree pickup. However, last year they received a call just after Labor Day weekend requesting the pickup of a tree from Christmas 2015 – 9 months after the end of the season.

And who could forget Somerville’s resident turkey? Our call center received multiple calls last summer about turkey sightings, placing him in a variety of locations across the City like the Century Bank and even the I-93 entrance ramp during rush hour. Turkeys weren’t the only animal sightings you reported though. There were also calls concerning families of bunnies hopping around Somerville.

For daily updates on what your fellow Somervillians are contacting us about, you can view our 311 data and explore an interactive map of requests at our online Data Farm at Somervillema.gov/datafarm. But no matter the nature of the service or information request, our 311 customer service representatives work hard to provide you with top notch service and many of you took notice. This year we launched a satisfaction survey for 311 that provided us with useful feedback. Key was that most callers, including those with issues we couldn’t solve to their liking, rated our operators highly, giving them a 4.53 out of 5 with 5 being the highest score.

One survey respondent who called about a parking ticket noted:  “Although I was not happy receiving the letter in the mail threatening the jeopardy of my renewal registration and driver’s license, I appreciate the utmost respect, responses, and attentiveness I received from 311.” The constituent services crew appreciates all feedback because they want to make sure they are giving you the best service possible. But the positive feedback especially goes a long way in boosting morale.

In addition to praise from the community, Somerville 311 also received the 2016 QScend Technologies Innovators Award for contributing ideas for feature enhancements to their citizen request management software. Put simply, we’ve been working with them to make it possible to easily follow up with you so you know how we’re handling your request and when it is resolved. The feature was implemented earlier this year and now benefits customers across the country. And we’re continuing to work to refine it.

Another way 311 works to serve all residents is by making their services available not only 24 hours a day, 365 days a year, but also by offering multiple points of contact: phone, email, mobile app, City Website, Facebook, and Twitter, postal mail, fax, or by visiting the City Hall welcome desk during business hours. And we can pretty much take a call in any language with the help of our in-house bilingual operators as well as our Language Line service, which ups our interpretation options to 240 languages.

Perhaps it is most important to remember that our constituent services department is here for you. And as I say frequently, we want to hear from you no matter how big or small you think an issue may be. Community engagement comes in more than one form. It is not just showing up to the polls on Election Day or attending a community meeting on the big City projects. It is also maintaining an open line of communication with your government and ensuring they know about an issue as soon as it arises. Somerville 311 makes it possible for residents to do just that. We hope to continue hearing from you this year, and as always, let us know what we can do to make living in Somerville better for you – even if it means assisting you with Christmas tree disposal in September.