Spring2019
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SPRING 2019<br />
ISSUE 1<br />
FOCUS ON CUSTOM FIELDS<br />
How one California community has eased its reporting burden to the state<br />
and increased revenue collection.<br />
An FAQ on how to use custom fields in your QAlert installation.<br />
PLUS<br />
A new tool for sharing resuable comments.<br />
And new to the QScend community.
New Within the QScend Community<br />
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ABOUT QALERT INSIDER,<br />
THE MAGAZINE<br />
The magazine is published<br />
three times a year,<br />
approximately every four<br />
months, and features stories<br />
that were first published to<br />
the QAlert Insider blog.<br />
CONTRIBUTING STAFF<br />
Ed Dzitko<br />
Managing Editor and<br />
Contributing Writer<br />
Karen Kirk<br />
Editor and Contributing<br />
Writer<br />
QALERT INSIDER,<br />
THE MAGAZINE IS A<br />
PUBLICATION OF:<br />
QScend Technologies, Inc.<br />
231 Bank Street, 2nd Floor<br />
Waterbury, CT 06798<br />
203-757-6000<br />
qalertinsider@qscend.com
.<br />
Customer<br />
Service<br />
is Job No.1<br />
for Atoka<br />
Public<br />
Works By Ed Dzitko<br />
The public works<br />
department in Atoka,<br />
TN, prides itself on its<br />
customer service. In<br />
fact, it strives to be so good at<br />
what it does, that department<br />
director Daniel Lovett would<br />
say that the 9,500 residents<br />
of that Tipton County<br />
community might be just a<br />
little bit spoiled.<br />
“Absolutely we’re spoiling<br />
them,” said Lovett. “Our motto<br />
in Atoka is ‘Making Life Flow.’<br />
At public works, that’s what<br />
we say. Everything flows – the<br />
streets, the water, the sewer.<br />
You want it to flow for your<br />
citizens. That’s what we’re<br />
here for.”<br />
There’s Always Room for<br />
Improvement<br />
In 2015, Lovett suggested to<br />
then town manager Brian<br />
Koral that he wanted a system<br />
to better track the work that<br />
public works was doing.<br />
Koral, already familiar with<br />
the QAlert citizen request<br />
management system from<br />
his time as city manager in<br />
Sedalia, MO, suggested that<br />
Lovett take a look. The rest, as<br />
they say, is history.<br />
“Before QAlert, everybody just<br />
accepted the response times<br />
they got.” said Lovett. “But I<br />
wanted more. That was me<br />
driving it. I knew we could do<br />
more, and I wanted more out<br />
of my people.”<br />
Now, three years later, Atoka<br />
is taking advantage of several<br />
aspects of QAlert in its drive to<br />
do all it can for its citizens as<br />
quickly as it can. That includes<br />
using the desktop control<br />
panel to work within QAlert<br />
in the office, QAlert Mobile to
work effectively in the field, and AtokaConnect, to<br />
report issues via Apple and Android smartphone<br />
apps.<br />
Technology Equals Manpower<br />
“Our department is small, so any boost we can get<br />
from technology is like adding manpower,” said<br />
Lovett. “One big benefit of QAlert for us is that our<br />
response times have gotten a lot faster. We can<br />
respond to most calls in five minutes.<br />
“In municipalities with a regular work order<br />
system,” added Lovett, “it may take them a day to<br />
answer a call. We’re streamlined. We can get down<br />
to the minute how we can get to certain calls.<br />
How Does Atoka Do It<br />
How exactly does Atoka handle things so quickly?<br />
• When Lovett receives an urgent request while<br />
in the office, he re-routes the request to one of his<br />
staff members in the field. After viewing the details<br />
on an iPad, that staff member addresses that<br />
issue within a couple of minutes. “It’s immediate.<br />
It’s real-time work ordering,” said Lovett. “It’s not<br />
waiting – get a call, go get a piece of paper, wait<br />
for somebody to figure that out. It’s real time. It’s<br />
amazing.<br />
• When Lovett sees a problem in town, he pulls<br />
out his smartphone. “I’ll see a stop sign that needs<br />
to be straightened. I’ll snap a picture on my iPhone,<br />
and send it, and it’s done. It’s easy. It gives you the<br />
place, the location, the picture of it, you don’t even<br />
have to explain it.”<br />
• When residents request trash bins or that their<br />
water be turned on, just like that, public works is<br />
on the job. “Before they get back home, the trash<br />
can is in their driveway and their water’s turned<br />
on,” said Lovett. “The request goes to the on-call<br />
guy and his iPad, and he can get it done before the<br />
people even get home.”<br />
QAlert Fosters Communication<br />
To Lovett, a part of the customer service process<br />
is communication, and QAlert helps facilitate<br />
that through<br />
“Our department<br />
is small, so any<br />
boost we can get<br />
from technology<br />
is like adding<br />
manpower.”<br />
its notification<br />
feature. With the<br />
check of a box,<br />
submitters are<br />
contacted with<br />
a status report.<br />
DPW staffers<br />
don’t have<br />
to stop what<br />
they’re doing to<br />
let Atoka citizens<br />
know exactly how their problems were taken<br />
care of. They can do that as they log their work in<br />
QAlert.<br />
“Anytime a government can communicate with<br />
its people, that’s a plus,” said Lovett, “We want<br />
to be as transparent as we can, and by being<br />
transparent, the guys know they can’t fudge<br />
anything. They can’t turn in a work order and say<br />
they can’t do it. Put that in the system, and the<br />
phone starts a-ringing. There’s an accountability to<br />
this, and we’re high on accountability.”
Managing<br />
Abandoned<br />
Vehicles with<br />
Custom Fields<br />
By Karen Kirk<br />
If anyone outside the Salinas, CA, Police<br />
Department-Special Ops Division didn’t<br />
know about one of the city’s biggest<br />
problems, they know now.<br />
Abandoned vehicles.<br />
In just six months since the city launched its new<br />
citizen service initiative, powered by QAlert, there<br />
have been more than 3,000 service requests<br />
about these metallic eyesores.<br />
Special Ops expects to more than double that<br />
number of requests over 12 months, and in<br />
order to better manage the vehicle abatement<br />
process — from discovery to towing for those<br />
cars and trucks which appear to be abandoned<br />
on public property — the division determined it<br />
needed a more effective way to manage all the<br />
data it was collecting.<br />
Once the city decided to deploy QAlert, that<br />
more effective option had become available.<br />
Special Ops created 19 custom fields, including<br />
vehicle make, model, and tow date, to ensure
that particular details about the abandoned<br />
vehicle are recorded online, to streamline<br />
the data collection process, and to provide<br />
a single place all officers could access the<br />
information.<br />
“Because we are able to create custom fields,<br />
we can move away from our Microsoft Access<br />
spreadsheet and just have one list,” said Sgt.<br />
Kendall Gray, Salinas Police Department.<br />
“With a projection of more than 7,000<br />
complaints this year, not having to enter<br />
matching data on two lists saves time and<br />
increases accuracy.”<br />
Through QAlert, community service officers<br />
can generate real-time reports and see what’s<br />
happening at any point. The spreadsheet they<br />
had been using may or may not have been<br />
Ops officers on their beats is the city’s<br />
Abandoned Vehicle Beat report, which is<br />
distributed to those on patrol. The officers<br />
review the information, such as color/<br />
description, make/model, and license plate<br />
number, to easily find what’s been reported<br />
on each beat and to not mark or tow the<br />
wrong vehicle.<br />
“We need certain information in order to<br />
properly respond to these calls and have<br />
accurate information about the vehicle,” said<br />
Gray.<br />
QAlert is also helping Special Ops with<br />
its reports to the State of California,<br />
which reimburses Salinas for each towed<br />
abandoned vehicle. The data collection<br />
through QAlert is key to the record keeping<br />
required by the state.<br />
Officers must collect specific data to<br />
ensure the vehicle meets the definition of<br />
‘abandoned’ to protect the city from state<br />
audit. This data includes if a vehicle is in<br />
inoperable condition, missing doors and/or<br />
wheels, or if the car is leaking any liquid.<br />
current, depending on when an officer had<br />
time to update the document. Now, officers<br />
can develop reports using any combination<br />
of those 19 fields to show other users exactly<br />
what they want, and need, to see.<br />
“Internally, I want to know how many total<br />
complaints we have, how many vehicles<br />
we’ve marked, how many we’ve towed, and<br />
how many moved after we’ve marked them,”<br />
said Gray. “My city manager and police chief,<br />
and city council members, also want to see<br />
how we’re doing. We can show our numbers<br />
through QAlert’s customizable reports and<br />
our custom fields.”<br />
One example of how QAlert’s custom fields<br />
have improved the efficiency of the Special<br />
“There’s a lot of criteria that make up an<br />
abandoned vehicle and we need QAlert’s<br />
custom fields to properly document that<br />
it is (abandoned),” said Sgt. Gray. If the<br />
criteria isn’t met, the state may audit the<br />
department’s records, thereby delaying or<br />
refusing abatement reimbursement monies.<br />
Finally, QAlert enables the public to submit<br />
abandoned vehicle complaints online, and<br />
further enhances the effectiveness and<br />
efficiency of the process. Some custom fields<br />
are public and accessible on the webform<br />
so residents can help identify vehicles in<br />
question. That’s made a huge difference, as<br />
well.<br />
“We tell our residents that their complaints<br />
will be worked faster if they are submitted in<br />
QAlert,” said Gray. “I’m proud to say that this<br />
efficiency has produced a 92% closure rate for<br />
our division.”
Eliminating Duplication<br />
of Effort in Redmond, WA<br />
By Ed Dzitko<br />
The timing of Matt’s<br />
trash tweet was simply<br />
perfect. Just before a<br />
learning session on how<br />
to use QAlert, the city’s new<br />
request management software,<br />
an employee monitoring the<br />
City of Redmond’s social media<br />
sent an email about three bags<br />
of garbage to several other staff<br />
members.<br />
Within a very short time, two<br />
representatives in the customer<br />
service department each<br />
emailed two other people, and<br />
faster than anyone could say,<br />
“duplication of effort,” at least<br />
seven people had become<br />
involved.<br />
“During our learning process, I<br />
think that realizing we had that<br />
kind of [duplication of effort]<br />
was probably the biggest eyeopener,”<br />
said Ryan Spencer,<br />
customer service manager. “We<br />
live in an instant gratification<br />
society, and we really did<br />
find that people can leave a<br />
message and call a different line<br />
15 minutes later and say they<br />
haven’t heard back from anyone<br />
yet.<br />
“Everyone is doing more with<br />
less these days,” Spencer<br />
continued, “so multiple people<br />
working on the same thing isn’t<br />
good.”<br />
The building out of Redmond’s<br />
new customer service center<br />
on the cavernous ground floor<br />
of its city hall, and the addition<br />
of several meetings rooms,<br />
evolved from a 2014 facility<br />
study and recommendations<br />
by a lean team. The team also<br />
suggested securing a request<br />
management solution, and<br />
eventually selected QAlert.<br />
Duplication of effort can also be<br />
a symptom of department silos.<br />
With no central database of<br />
issues that needed handling, for<br />
everyone to see, a department<br />
could address the same issue<br />
without knowing others were<br />
doing the same thing.<br />
“We needed something to bring<br />
us into today’s day and age with<br />
online and mobile functionality,”<br />
said Spencer. “We needed a
system to intake customer calls<br />
that would allow accessibility<br />
for all staff in order to see if<br />
they received a second call an<br />
hour later and could say, ‘Oh,<br />
I see you’ve already talked<br />
to someone in the mayor’s<br />
office. This has been routed to<br />
our public works department<br />
and they are investigating the<br />
pothole’ or whatever the case<br />
may be.”<br />
“Everyone is doing<br />
more with less<br />
these days,” Spencer<br />
continued, “so<br />
multiple people<br />
working on the same<br />
thing isn’t good.”<br />
With multiple departments<br />
fielding the same call, and all<br />
tracking data differently, it<br />
was very difficult for the city to<br />
analyze and/or change anything<br />
based on what they numbers<br />
were saying.<br />
AD SPACE<br />
“And because we pride<br />
ourselves as a data-driven<br />
organization, we needed<br />
software that would allow us<br />
to get our heads around that<br />
data in a readable, logical<br />
manner so that we could make<br />
adjustments to processes, or<br />
anything, and improve,” Spencer<br />
added.<br />
“We are just a few months into<br />
using the system and it’s gaining<br />
in popularity, both internally<br />
and externally,” concluded<br />
Spencer. “We’re seeing an uptick<br />
on requests coming in that<br />
had doubled, tripled, and even<br />
quadrupled over the last few<br />
weeks.”