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'Fix It' gives residents platforms for problems
Stock Photo – Plano’s new ‘Fix It’ tool will allow residents to submit pictures city property damage through text message or on the web. Complaints may also be turned in using a toll-free number.
By Ian Floyd, Staff writer
Residents will soon have a new tool to funnel property complaints to the city.
This week, city officials unveiled "Fix It," a program meant to provide the community with better access to reporting issues about city property -- things like potholes, graffiti and cracked sidewalks -- that need repair.
"It is an organization-wide strategy to manage, report and respond to citizen and resident concerns," David Stephens, director of technology services, told the city council Monday evening.
For the more technologically savvy, pictures and GPS coordinates can be attached to further specify problem areas. The program collects all reports and submits a work order to that individual department.
"Part of what we liked about this package that we selected is the multiple ways you can access the process," Dana Conklin, public information officer, told the council. "Ultimately it all goes to the same location. No matter how it's entered, it ends up in the workflow system so that the staff gets one ticket regardless of how it gets entered."
From there, the department classifies the issue in order of importance and date received. When the problem is repaired, the person who reported it receives a notification that the job is complete. Photographs of the area are posted, so before-and-after images can be compared. All the information from each job is compiled and analyzed to determine problem areas in Plano and the effectiveness of the program.
"We are going to be tracking our reporting data as far as how many are reported and what topics they are reported on," Conklin said. "[We will] compare that with our existing system data and see if we are getting the same type of activity. The greater this improves, the greater the end of the trial period will determine what we do with the CRM [customer response management] system as a whole."
For a sum of $9,120, PublicStuff, a customer service agency, will create and maintain the entire system. The company offers monthly maintenance upgrades, 24-hour tech support, a fully functional smartphone app and a website connected with the city of Plano's website. If the one-year trial is successful, the contract will likely be renewed.
"They host it completely on their site," Conklin said. "We don't have the backup data, and we don't have the responsibility for the management of that. It will be the PublicStuff server, but it will be ours; we will coexist together."
The project is in the final stages of development and is planned to be released in late June or early July.
"We hope that our residents will begin sending in their concerns for us to address the community and work as partners to get things corrected and fixed as quickly as possible," Conklin said.
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