Think of PSR as a 311 system that covers all of the U.S. & Canada Minus the large and expensive Call Center, and the hard-to-manage Knowledge Base. In a nutshell, here's a brief video about what we do. Here is the ultra-simple process for responding to online PSR-generated Service Requests We take non-emergency service requests from anyone in North America where PSR is
Category: Sector TopicsNews and views about general Public Sector topics
Customer Service & Website Branding Consistency
When adding a full-function (3rd Party) Customer Service, or 311 system, to a Customer-facing website, Service Providers insist on consistent website branding. That's why we offer the services of our highly creative Design Specialist to assemble a widget image that blends perfectly with your existing branding, including perfect color matching, and the use of vector graphics to allow unlimited
Process Standardization. Marching in Step?
In previous posts, we examined the problem of variation in business process implementation. In this post, we will look at one of the solutions to that problem - process standardization. Please picture in your mind's eye a group of soldiers matching in step at a parade to music played by a band. What makes the variation by the marching soldiers and the band minimal? Standard work describes
How Can Local Government IT Work More Like Silicon Valley?
Palo Alto’s city manager wants local government IT to rip up the outdated rule book to make better investments. "Local government IT orgs will spend in excess of $50 billion this year on information technology. More than half of that money will go toward maintaining outdated and ineffective computer systems. As cities approach the inevitable task of replacing and updating them, James Keene has
Follow the Zika menace as it spreads across North America…
The Zika menace is here to stay. Even though the Olympics have finished, the Zika menace is here to stay. With outbreaks moving ever northwards, it seems inevitable that the virus will spread until the particular mosquitoes that carry it, start to die out due to environmental and climatic barriers. The U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, is providing an almost real-time tracking
PSR Featured in GCN by Stephanie Kanowitz
A big thank you to Stephanie Kanowitz for her excellent article in the April 28th edition of GCN. Stephanie focuses on the multi-jurisdiction functionality that enables Public Sector clients to give their constituents branded Apps, while enabling communications between jurisdictions, with no IT involvement. Unlike most service request systems, PSR covers all topics and all departments, rather
Pelham Equates Customer Service, Tax Containment
Many in the Public Service Sector still believe that providing best-in-class Customer Service always increases the costs of Service Delivery. This attitude results in attempts to offer minimal Customer Service, and trying to get away with it, by convincing elected officials that improved Customer Service will mean cuts in Services. The hope is that the electorate will swallow this argument and
Pelham Water and Wastewater Lowest Fees in Niagara Region
Congratulations to our original "launch" Customer, the Town of Pelham, Canada, for the third year in a row where water / waste-water fee increases have been kept to ZERO! In fact they are the Lowest Fees in the entire Niagara Region. For more details, please take a look at their recent Press Release on this important topic. We work with Pelham Staff, all the time, to get their feedback on
Overtake Your Backlog
From Ian Lucas, Co-Owner, Public Service Request Inc. Your Service Request Backlog that is. Unfortunately it's true that the majority of Public Service Providers don't have good processes in place for prioritizing, grouping, merging and resolving both internally and externally generated Service Requests, to overtake your backlog. Step one is reorganizing your business processes so that all
Pelham Path to Continuous Improvements in Customer Service
It's an important final step to commit to a common system for Customer Service across all Departments and all Staff. At the Town of Pelham, in the heart of the Niagara Region, they use their Seasonally published "Leisure Guides" to reinforce the message that the Town and its Staff are responsive to all Citizen Service Requests through the 24/7 convenience of the Town's web site with a view to
Dave Robbins Press Release. Official U.S. Announcement.
Fresh And Invigorated from the APWA Congress in Phoenix
Sharing a booth at the APWA Congress, with strategic business ally Rival Solutions, Dave Robbins, President of Public Service Request LLC was very pleased to discuss and present the integration of Rival Solutions' RUBIX Road and Sidewalk Performance Evaluation mobile technology, with PSR's Citizen Service Request cloud-based system. For Clients who use PSR to establish standardized work
Proud Sponsor of Public Sector Enterprise ICT Conference London
PSR are pleased to announce that we are sponsors of the forthcoming Public Sector Enterprise ICT Conference (PSEICT) taking place on the 10th of Nov 2015, at the Russell Hotel in London. This is the UK’S most prestigous public sector ICT conference and exhibition for senior decision makers across all functions of government, and we are proud to support it. If you are planning to attend the
Collaborative Service Delivery (Fixing The Disconnect)
Transparency, accountability, engagement (and all those other buzz words that we perhaps overuse), have a downside - heightened Public expectations for improved Service Delivery. The Public sees, ever more clearly, that we are not being cost and resource efficient in getting this done. Collaboration as an approach to the delivery of local services, focuses on sharing costs and benefits by two or
Want to see our cascading widgets?
Imagine being able to add Customer Service functionality, configured to the topic of each of your web pages? Sounds tedious, complicated and expensive? With PSR's cascading widgets, it's none of the above. Take a look at one of our Client's website and you see how they've achieved this. You can go even further and customize each widget image to match its associated web page. The Public can get
The Personal Price of Public Service
In this post, we take a break from public service efficiency and effectiveness to share the very moving personal story of Dr Allen Ault who served as the State of Georgia's Chief Correction Officer until 1995. Please watch and read excerpts from his interview here. Please share your thoughts. As a public official, has your work taken its toll on your personal life? If so, in what way? How have
Reliability is the key quality success factor…
I would like you to imagine that your journey to work last week took you on average 27 minutes - not bad reliability you might think -I'll take that. However what if I added that the following detail about journey times: Day Journey (in mins) Monday 15 Tuesday 35 Wednesday 20 Thursday 50 Friday 15 The wide variation in journey times would probably
CoPQ? What on earth is that?!?
When seeking to measure and compare the performance of employees, many public service provides often focus on efficiency measure. To illustrate, take a moment or two to ponder this hypothetical scenario: Given the same resources (time, tools, training, etc), one of the workers in your team (let's call him Bob), on average, repairs 10 potholes in a day whilst his colleague Billy repairs only 7
Can we have some change please?
'Nurse, how's the mayor who swallowed those quarters doing? 'No change yet...' **cheesy grin** OK, that's the pun out of the way, down to serious business. "Nothing is certain except for death and taxes". That famous quote attributed to Benjamin Franklin highlights the inevitability of change. So it's to be expected that the world in which the public service provider operates will change.
Hey, how are you/we doing?
When it comes to obtaining feedback on their performance, many public service providers primarily turn to those citizens who have consumed their service via customer satisfaction surveys for example. It seems to make sense – after all, who best to comment on the service than those who have experienced it directly? However that approach ignores the differences between outputs (the end results of a
