A resident reports a pothole. She receives an automated acknowledgement with no reference number and hears nothing for three weeks.
She reports it again, mentions it to a councillor, and posts about it locally. The pothole was assessed in week one, categorised correctly and scheduled for a programme in week six, and nobody told her any of that.
Step 1: acknowledge immediately with a reference
A number the resident can quote. Without one they have no way to ask about it and no evidence they reported it, so they report again.
Step 2: confirm what was understood
The location, the problem and any detail given. Residents frequently report something different from what gets logged, and confirming it catches that.
Step 3: explain the assessment process
That it will be inspected or assessed against criteria, and roughly when. Residents assume reporting leads directly to work and are confused when it does not.
Step 4: publish the priority framework
What counts as urgent, what is programmed and what falls below a threshold. Residents accept a framework and resent an unexplained delay.
Step 5: give a timescale, even a wide one
Assessed within a period, scheduled within another. A resident with a timescale waits, and one without it contacts you weekly.
Step 6: tell them when it falls below the threshold
Honestly, with the reason. A resident told the defect does not meet the intervention criteria disagrees and stops reporting, which is a better outcome than silence.
Step 7: let them check status without contacting anybody
A reference lookup. This alone removes a substantial proportion of contacts across every service.
Step 8: notify on completion
The single most effective step and the one most often missing. A resident who is told the work is done does not report it again and tells other people.
Step 9: handle duplicates gracefully
Several residents reporting the same defect is useful information rather than a nuisance, and each of them deserves the same acknowledgement.
Step 10: capture the right detail at report
Precise location, photographs where possible and any safety concern. A vague report produces an inspection that finds nothing.
Step 11: route the urgent reports immediately
Safety critical defects need a different path from a programmed repair, and residents cannot be expected to know which is which.
Step 11b: tell people when somebody else owns the problem
Highways, water, the parish and a private landowner all produce defects residents assume are the council's. Saying plainly who is responsible, and passing the report on where you can rather than closing it, prevents a resident bouncing between organisations for a month.
Step 12: cover the whole range of services consistently
Bins, street lighting, fly tipping, trees and parking all behave the same way and are frequently handled by different systems, which is the fragmentation in bin, permit and service questions on council websites.
Step 13: keep the related enquiries joined up
Residents reporting a problem frequently ask about something else, including the questions in planning application questions from residents.
Step 14: measure what actually matters
Repeat report rates and time to notification tell you more than volume, which is the reporting discipline in reporting questions from marketing clients and how to report chatbot results to your boss.
Step 15: take the report at the hour it is noticed
An assistant that takes the location, the problem and a photograph, issues a reference, states the timescale and lets somebody check status later closes the loop that currently produces the duplicate reports. See features, start at try, and the sector view sits under nonprofits.