You can’t fight city hall – or can you?

City of Baltimore residents were having a hard time resolving problems when they called into the city’s many areas of government services. In some cases, requests were lost or misrouted, resulting in long delays and frustrated residents.

As part of the Mayor Martin O&singlequot;Malley’s initiative to become more efficient and accountable, the City of Baltimore implemented a new central intake call system for all city service requests, a system that’s bolstered by a new homegrown CRM application.

The application, called CitiTrack, is much like the CRM systems used by telephone and electric companies to not only deliver, but also measure how good their customer service is. It provides each citizen calling into 311 with a tracking number so that their call is tracked from the moment a request enters the system, all the way through to its resolution.

The center, which is open for business 24 hours a day, 7 days a week, ensures uniform service through the use of 300 preprogrammed service request types, covering most citizen needs. Each request type is scripted with a basic set of questions, which the city&singlequot;s customer service agents use to get accurate information and ensure uniform service. CitiTrack then routes the requests to the most appropriate city service provider.

The 311 center is engineered to handle as many as 5,000 calls a day, and its 75-member staff is trained to provide residents with the most accessible methods to request services.

The result? A system that not only makes city citizens happy, but also resulted in the city winning Gartner’s prestigious CRM Excellence Award.

“They succeeded in addressing the more challenging aspects of CRM, which are the business processes, the valued customer experience and organizational collaboration,” said Walter Jankowski, research director at Gartner, a Stamford, Conn.-based consultancy.