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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.”

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