How About Direct Access To Mayor Miller

That might be an interesting excercise....determining whether you can get direct access to the mayor. I know in 2006 of about 14 emails I sent to the Mayor not one was answered directly by the replay came from some flunky. Messages to councillors is a joke as well....try sending a email to the council as a whole and see how many responses you actually get.

Hung up on civic access

Jim Byers
Toronto Star

Nobody likes getting the runaround when they call city hall.

It's seen as such a big issue that the City of Toronto's telephone directory gives workers explicit instructions on how to answer and transfer calls and how to leave a proper voice-mail message.

They were almost certainly quite serious, but the authors of the section titled "Telephone Practices" managed to come up with some amusing thoughts.

"Answer all incoming calls on the first where possible, and no later than the third ring," the directions state. Workers are told they should offer a greeting such as "Good morning" or "Good afternoon," then state either "City of Toronto" or "Toronto," and then offer up the name of their division and follow that with "May I help you?" or "How can I help you?"

The book also tells city employees they're "expected to transfer callers to the correct person or service area," and should stay on the line to make sure callers get the correct person.

"There is nothing more frustrating to the public than being passed around an organization and having to repeat their story over and over again," the book says.

The directory also warns workers to avoid such phrases as "That's not our job," and "I don't know." Instead, the city says, employees should reply with something like, "That's a good question. Let me try and find out for you."

When it comes to voice mail, staff are advised to update their personal greeting daily with information regarding their whereabouts or who else the public can call.

So, is the message getting through?

Just for fun, the Toronto Star made 10 random calls to city workers last week to see if they're up to snuff on handling calls from the public. The results were decidedly mixed.

Only four calls were answered by a person. (Admittedly, that may be because it was the Friday morning before the Christmas break.)

Of the four, only one managed to squeeze in the entire recommended greeting, answering the telephone with a cheery "Good morning, City of Toronto, North York Civic Centre, May I help you?"

The person who answered at the Office of Emergency Management didn't offer to help but was solid on the first three parts. One person gave a department name and their own name, while the other simply answered with the department name.

Most calls were answered quickly but one, to the financial administration office at Metro Hall, went unanswered after 10 rings.

The Star also tried out the call transfer policy. Knowing it was the wrong number, we called the North York Committee of Adjustment to complain about a sidewalk crack. A polite woman said we should call Works and Emergency Services. She dug out the number and transferred us after we asked. We were punched through to another number – the wrong one.

"North Toronto treatment plant," said the worker who answered. "I'm calling about a crack in my sidewalk," a reporter said.

"That's totally out of my field," the worker replied. "The best I can do is give you the Access Toronto number," the city's general help line.

The Access Toronto person nailed the greeting, and put us through to one of those annoying "If you have a sidewalk crack, press one," recordings. After navigating the system, we managed to get a live employee in the correct department, although they answered by stating their last name.

Voice mail has been around for years, but some employees haven't quite got the hang of it. The greeting of a worker in policy, planning, finance and administration gave only his first name while a couple of other workers had full voice-mail boxes with no options given.

The best voice mail was for a fellow who said he was away until Jan. 8. But he was nice enough to say that, if we wanted to, we could call another fellow who was only on vacation until Jan. 2.

Thanks.

The city has plans to open a 3-1-1 call centre in July 2008 so the public can call one number for all City of Toronto queries. The centre is expected to cost about $27 million.