Customer Story

CASE STUDY: Longview, TX CREATING A DIGITAL 311 CITIZEN SERVICE PLATFORM The city of Longview, known for its sweet tea and 'squeeze butter,' is located in East Texas between Dallas and Shreveport, Louisiana, and has an estimated population of 80,500. Looking for ways to increase service to its residents, the Longview City Council initially investigated building-out and deploying a traditional 311 citizen service center. The City hired consultants to analyze the project's feasibility and the resources required. But while the projected outcomes were positive, the council ultimately realized that a traditional citizen service center, based on agents answering live telephone calls, would be too expensive to be feasible. Not to be discouraged, Justin Cure, information services manager at the City of Longview, saw an opportunity to implement a digital 311 service, which would allow citizens to report issues directly to the City from a smartphone or the web. Cure believed he could accomplish many of the same goals of a traditional 311 citizen service center in an innovative manner by using a low-cost civic engagement application. Longview reduced the cost of each 311 transaction from $10 per call to less than $1 per call. Understanding the Requirements There were several important requirements for the solution: first, it needed to integrate directly into Rock Solid for service request and work order management platform. Second, it would have to reduce manual data entry and ensure existing processes would be impacted minimally. But while increasing customer service was important, the solution would also need to increase the efficiency of taking in citizen service requests and benefit overall operations financially. Creating a Platform Longview contracted with Rock Solid, a real-time civic engagement platform that allows for branding and customizations, to provide a digital 311 service. Longview deployed the application on smartphones and its existing website for staff and citizen services. The 311 application allows users to file service requests from both a native mobile application and the City's website. Residents simply take a picture or video of the issue, enter some basic information, and click submit. Using the Cityworks service request API on the backend, Rock Solid automatically converts the issue into a service request in Cityworks, which is displayed in the appropriate staff member's Cityworks Inbox.

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