Item - 2025.EX26.7

The Executive Committee:

1. Requested the Executive Director, Customer Experience (311), the General Manager, Parks and Recreation, the General Manager, Toronto Water, the General Manager, Transportation Services, the General Manager, Solid Waste Management Services, the Executive Director, Municipal Licensing and Standards, and the Executive Director, Environment, Climate and Forestry to report back to the Service Excellence Committee by the second quarter of 2026 with a proposed plan and phased approach to simplify the 311 service intake process, starting with Parks Operations, by streamlining public-facing service categories and consolidating service codes where appropriate.

At its meeting on September 12, 2025 the Service Excellence Committee considered Item SE9.2 and made a recommendation to the Executive Committee.

Summary from the report (August 27, 2025) from the Chief Technology Officer and the Executive Director, Customer Experience:

This report responds to a request from the Service Excellence Committee to provide information on the history of 311, integration with divisions, and initiatives that are underway to improve the customers' end-to-end experience accessing City services through 311.

311 Toronto launched in September 2009 as the primary gateway to City information and services, centralizing numerous phone numbers and divisional contact centres into a single, easily remembered number (311). The launch connected existing and integrable divisional work management systems with the 311 customer relationship management system, automating information flow between 311 and the following five Integrated Service Divisions: Solid Waste Management Services, Transportation Services, Toronto Water, Municipal Licensing and Standards, and Environment, Climate and Forestry – Urban Forestry.

This integration allows the public to open service requests to report issues or request City services via 311. Information entered in the service request is automatically forwarded to the appropriate Integrated Service Division for review and action. Upon actioning, integration also allows information and some updates from Integrated Service Divisions to be automatically shared back with 311, enabling the public to obtain updates on the status of their service request, including whether the service request has been addressed.

However, information sharing is limited in some cases by legacy work management systems and business requirements, which require updates to permit the sharing of notes and status updates and/or to enable planned enhancements aimed at supporting the quality of information shared back to 311 and ultimately the public. Customers would also benefit from standardized quality notes that are available for every closed service request.

A jurisdictional scan of large North American cities shows that many municipalities are enhancing their 311 operations to meet customers' expectations by standardizing processes, fostering a customer-first culture through change management, and updating technology to support these improvements. These process and technology changes require inter-divisional collaboration and accountability to ensure adoption. The Customer Experience Division, in collaboration with Technology Services Division and the Integrated Service Divisions, are working on two key initiatives:

- Closing the Loop: Focuses on enhancing the quality of information provided to customers and standardizing how service requests are managed across divisions; and
 

- Enterprise Work Management Solution: Replacing legacy work management systems with modern platforms that provide the technical foundation to support these improvements.

These initiatives complement additional improvements that have been made since the launch of 311 to enhance the customer experience, including the expansion of multi-lingual and multi-channel support and proactive customer communication options (e.g. language support for live telephone translation services, introduction of an interactive voice response to route customers to appropriate staff support based on their selection). Additionally, 311 will be providing intake services for Parks and Community Recreation, with integration planned by the end of September 2025 and end of 2026, respectively.