NYC Complaint Line Goes Mobile

By MICHEL PEDROSO

Guess what time of day New Yorkers call  NYC311 to file a non-emergency complaint. If you guessed Monday morning at 11 a.m., you got it right.

“Is there a reason for that?” asked Council Member James Vacca, who on Tuesday oversaw a meeting on the use of the complaint line’s user-driven technology.

“Do people have their coffee, and they’re fresh from the weekend or something?” Vacca said.

While Joseph R. Morrisroe, the executive director of NYC311, had no definitive answer for why Monday morning is the time the lines get lit up the most, he did have an educated guess: with only 205 operators (down from over 300 a few years ago), the service still has been able to adequately (in his eyes) service citizens.

“Five years ago, 99.9 percent of all contacts with 311 went through the phone channel,” he said. “Now, 80 percent of the contacts go through the phone channel. Twenty percent go through the sub-service channels, such as online, mobile, text, Twitter.”

Like everybody else these days, NYC311 also has an Instagram and Twitter feed, as well as a mobile app.

Nevertheless Vacca  complained about various aspects of NYC311, including community boards, which he said are “supposed to be the vanguard of making sure people get city services,” not being properly taught how to use the service’s various user-driven technologies.

Brooklyn Councilman David G. Greenfield championed issues that draw various complaints over “just one person complaining about eight issues,” and tried to get at whether or not that’s the way things happen at NYC311.

“Putting a filter up front is not the best place, in my opinion,” said Morrisroe,

Vacca, who represents Throggs Neck and Pelham Bay, also expressed his displeasure with the services of NotifyNYC, saying, “I think we can do much better,” perhaps hinting at an upcoming hearing on the matter.

Before the hearing concluded, Vacca interrupted Noel Hidalgo of BetaNYC, who was going on and on and on showering NYC311 with love. Vacca asked him to focus instead on his recommendations for NYC311, which Hidalgo proceeded to do after explaining, “I just wanted to thank them, because I think NYC311 is so amazing.”