A resident passes the same broken street light every evening for three weeks. She intends to report it.
She looks at the council website, which is organised by department, and cannot work out whether a street light is highways, environment or something else. There are several forms and none of them obviously match.
She gives up. So does everybody else on that road, which is why the light is still out after three weeks and why nobody at the council knows about it.
Step 1: let people describe the problem in their own words
Rather than requiring them to identify a category first, which is the routing decision they are least equipped to make.
Step 2: establish the location precisely
The single most important field. A report without a usable location cannot be acted on and generates a follow up that frequently never gets answered.
Step 3: accept a photograph
Which answers most of the questions a follow up would ask, and lets whoever triages it judge severity without attending.
Step 4: ask how long it has been there
Because duration affects priority and because it reveals whether something has already been reported and not fixed.
Step 5: ask about immediate danger
Separately and early, since anything hazardous needs a different route and a different speed than a routine report.
Step 6: confirm the report was received
With a reference. This single step is what determines whether somebody reports the next thing they notice.
Step 7: state what happens next and roughly when
The inspection timescale, the likely action and the realistic timeframe, which is the ground in reporting a problem and what happens next.
Step 8: say plainly when nothing will be done
Where something falls below a threshold or belongs to somebody else, saying so honestly is better than silence and prevents repeat reports.
Step 9: route to the right owner automatically
Including the ones that belong to a utility, a housing provider or a private landowner rather than the council.
Step 10: recognise the duplicate reports
Several people reporting the same thing is useful information about severity, and most systems treat it as noise.
Step 11: accept reports at any hour
Because people notice things in the evening and on weekends, and a report deferred to Monday is frequently a report never made.
Step 12: close the loop when it is fixed
A short message when the work is done, which costs almost nothing and does more for public confidence than any campaign.
Step 13: publish what has been reported and fixed
Visibly, since residents who can see that reports produce outcomes report considerably more of them.
Step 14: let people check something already reported
Somebody who reported a pothole in March wants to know what happened to it. Without a way to check, they either report it again or conclude the process is pointless, and both outcomes make the service worse.
Step 15: let people report in one exchange
An assistant that takes a description in ordinary words, pins down the location, accepts a photograph, identifies the right owner, gives a reference and states what happens next turns a street light that stays broken for three weeks into a report made in the first evening. Set it up through install the widget and train your bot. The planning questions sit in planning application questions from residents, and the reporting back in how to report chatbot results to your boss or. The sector view sits under nonprofits.