City hall working to provide ‘exceptional service,’ city manager says
City hall’s focus on providing better customer service should reduce the problem of municipal departments working in silos and being less responsive to residents’ concerns, the city manager says.
“What we have to do — and we have talked about this (internally) — is we need to provide exceptional service. We have worked that into our daily lexicon,” city manager Jim Puffalt said during city council’s recent meeting. “In the last quarter, we included (departmental) leaders in our meetings and discussed how we can provide better service.”
This issue of departments not always working with each other concerns some residents, Mayor Fraser Tolmie said. During his visits throughout the community, residents have told him about their interactions with city hall. Specifically, they have discussed how — mostly in the past now — those departments worked alone on the problem, which posed a challenge to address residents’ issues. With the recent organizational renewal that city hall has gone through, Tolmie wondered how city administration planned to ensure the departments worked together as one unit to serve residents better.
Puffalt pointed to a new “mantra” that city hall had adopted, which included seven points to provide better customer service:
• We are solution-focused and ask, ‘How can we help you?’
• We resolve issues with a sense of urgency in a positive manner;
• We have the courage to be innovative, try new ideas, and suggestions and accept feedback;
• We create opportunities for others to succeed;
• We do not blame or make excuses;
• We leave negativity and egos at the door;
• We are in this together; we are TEAM.
“It … takes an effort of all the strategic leadership team to work together with council to ensure silos don’t happen,” he said. “We can’t guarantee that never happens, but we’re working hard to correct those issues that come forward ….
“So it’s us working together as a team, holding each other accountable, having a sense of urgency and getting our projects done in a timely fashion,” Puffalt added.