RVA 311 sees sustained call spike after January water crisis; city plans dispatch pilot and self-service expansions

Peter Bridal, director of Citizen Service and Response, briefed the Government Operations Committee on RVA 311 performance, capacity and planned upgrades, saying the city has expanded both staff and functionality and is monitoring a post-January surge in demand.

Bridal told the committee, "In 2024, we received over 200,000 calls. We answered over 160,000." He said the city's call-center team has exceeded a 94% call-quality target for several years, achieving about 95% under current measures, and that 2024 produced roughly 75,000 requests in the RVA 311 system.

Why it matters: the 311 system is the city's primary intake and case-management tool. Bridal said consistent use of RVA 311 creates a time-stamped record that allows departments to track and fulfill requests and enables council members to see district-level trends.

Key metrics and recent changes

- Volume and distribution: Bridal said call volume averaged about 800 calls per day in recent years; since the January water outage the center has seen averages over 1,200 calls per day and is watching whether that uptick is a long-term trend. He said about 40% of calls relate to social services, roughly 30% to finance and under 20% to public works.

- Staffing and hours: the 311 office has staffed up (about 50% above its original FY24 budgeted headcount for the call center) and extended weekday hours until 7 p.m. with Saturday morning coverage. The center's capacity was increased to handle about 900 calls per day.

- New features and service measures: callbacks were enabled in November so callers need not remain on hold; an after-call customer survey launched recently and early results across 1,166 responses showed an average score of 4.6 out of 5 for agent service. Bridal also highlighted that the city stood up online access for the family crisis fund and "by Monday, we had over 2,200 requests," which was handled through the RVA 311 portal.

Integration and pilot to reduce duplicative dispatch

Bridal said the city wants to reduce duplicated systems and simplify how residents contact city services. Currently some real-time field responses (for example, downed trees, loose dogs or urgent public-safety nuisances) are handled through a separate nonemergency police number because 311 is not integrated with dispatch. "We are looking at integrating the two systems so that we could take those requests," Bridal said, describing a pilot to connect 311 with dispatch to let 311 refer or route incidents that need a field response.

He said the two vendor systems are both cloud subscriptions and that the city owns both, but he cautioned that a narrow pilot is needed to work out operational considerations before full implementation.

Process, transparency and next steps

Bridal said 30% of requests currently come in via self-service and that the administration seeks to move more transactions online (for example, finance billing and payments through RVA Pay). He also noted challenges when requests are closed without plain-language comments and said staff are working with departments to ensure closure comments explain whether a request is a duplicate, closed after investigation with "no action warranted," or moved into the permitting/tracking system with a case number.

The committee asked about outsourcing and technology: Bridal said the call-center staff are city employees (not outsourced) and that the RVA 311 platform is a single vendor (AvePoint citizen service) that provides external portal, mobile apps and internal case-management tools. Bridal requested patience while his office pilots dispatch integration and said he will continue to monitor daily call volumes to decide if additional staffing is needed.

Bridal offered training for council liaisons and neighborhood groups on using the portal and said district-level insight dashboards are available to council members and the public through RVA 311 profiles.