Coral Gables 311 System

Users and Audience

The City of Coral Gable’s 311 system, built in conjunction with the Innovation and Technology Department and the Communications and Public Affairs Office and StackNexus, was created to address the needs of all residents. This robust system enables the city’s residents and businesses to actively report maintenance issues including potholes, graffiti, and streetlight problems using their mobile devices.

Problem

The City of Coral Gables’ underwent an extensive website redesign to enhance user experience and provide citizens with streamlined access to several resources, announcements, and enriching events. While the updated website was a huge success and received significant support and satisfaction from Coral Gables residents, the city’s team sought to surpass expectations by providing a way for citizens to actively engage in the well-being of their city.  
 
Before adopting the new 311 System, the City of Coral Gables carefully assessed its legacy CRM system and determined that its limited integration capabilities and functionality were leading to reduced civic engagements. Moreover, the system lacked UI/UX best practices, making it difficult to navigate, and hindered the city’s ability to effectively respond to citizens’ requests through its insufficient scalability and lack of real-time updates and data analysis. Following the successes of their website redesign efforts, the team sought to significantly improve their 311 offerings by adopting a more modern system capable of configurations and integrations that can more readily support their citizens’ needs. Although the city curated a detailed outline of their anticipated solution's features, the team required the support of a firm experienced in software development and deployment willing to work alongside them.

Solution

Through close collaboration, the StackNexus and Coral Gables teams designed and implemented a comprehensive 311 platform, serving as a central hub for service requests, inquiries, and diverse resources accessible across various devices. Leveraging tailored configurations within the Salesforce platform, the StackNexus team optimized the system for streamlined reporting, efficient issue tracking and resolution, accessibility, and the provision of informative dashboards enabling the city for efficient case management. To further expedite response times, StackNexus augmented the 311 platform with a Geographic Information System (GIS) and AI integration, enabling citizens to self-tag and measure objects within their reports while streamlining data collection and analysis. 

 Following the deployment of their revamped city website, the Coral Gables team sought to continue the implementation of user experience best practices to provide a seamless user journey in their 311 system. To enhance the system’s user experience, the StackNexus team implemented several features and approaches, including the following: 

  • Providing an FAQ repository for prompt information access. 

  • Developing a sophisticated chatbot to optimize citizen interaction by enabling effortless service request submissions, status inquiries of existing issues, and navigation through FAQs for 24/7 access to critical services.  

  • Developing and publishing a mobile app on both the Apple App Store and Google Play Store, providing users with full functionality from the desktop version on their mobile devices.  

  • Collaborating with the city’s staff to refine the app’s design by leveraging feedback, color palettes, and imagery to mirror Coral Gables' website CoralGables.com for a seamless and intuitive user journey. 

  • Establishing dedicated APIs for real-time notifications to keep citizens updated on the progress of their requests, city events, and meetings.  

  • Developing a citizen satisfaction functionality to provide the city with the analytics needed to effect changes in its approach and offerings.  

Impact

The City of Coral Gables’ efforts to create a comprehensive 311 system were in direct response to the citizens’ request for a simple and easy way to contact the city for feedback, submit service requests, and share concerns. As such, the city’s residents were involved in all stages of the project from ideation to research and the ultimate implementation of the CRM and DXP platforms.  
 
Working together, the city’s Innovation and Technology Department and the Office of Communication collaborated with StackNexus to create a modernized and mobile application, 311 digital experience (DXP), and Customer Relationship Management system (CRM) in alignment with citizen feedback and feature requests. Through meticulous planning and tailored system architecture, the new 311 mobile app not only integrated with the city’s other applications for transportation, parking, and other dedicated apps but also significantly improved communication abilities through its enhanced integration with the city’s website, chatbots, and events. Additionally, the city’s efforts to centralize resources for citizen needs and provide advanced technologies, such as an AI-powered chatbot for user support, have resulted in a significant improvement in user-friendliness and citizen satisfaction. 

The City of Coral Gables’ Innovation and Technology Department’s dedicated project manager and Office of Communications webmaster collaborated with all departments to serve as advocates for the residents and ensure alignment throughout the project lifecycle. Leveraging their insights, the project team further refined the applications to meet residents’ needs by launching a beta version pilot to enable residents to give feedback that directly improves the application after going live. Additionally, the city’s team and StackNexus worked with the citizen boards, volunteers, and members of the community to further enhance the applications’ accessibility. As a result, the project members provided users with additional functionalities such as anonymous request submittals, citizen tools, and the ability to sign up for automated text messages and app notifications for city events and meetings. 

Ultimately, the city’s efforts to collaborate with public sector experts such as StackNexus and Salesforce as well as its various departments, citizen-based organizations, and individual volunteers have culminated into a robust and innovative CRM and DXP platform that meets an array of citizen needs. While the city’s efforts have been well received by their users, the Coral Gables project team has directly enabled user feedback within the system to continue to improve the system and address technical issues more efficiently.