Sudden spikes in demand from members of the public reporting local street, highway and environment issues can be caused by a number of things.
Some causes are fairly predictable, like those associated with seasonal changes such as grass cutting or empty grit bins, while others happen more suddenly in the wake of unexpected incidents like flooding or community campaigns against issues like graffiti or fly-tipping.
That being the case, we’ve equipped FixMyStreet Pro, our fault reporting service for councils, highways agencies and other public bodies, with several useful tools to help manage sudden increases in reports.
Let’s take a look at some of them…
Site-wide messaging
From the FixMyStreet Pro administration dashboard, staff users with the correct permissions can set messaging to be displayed across their installation of the service.
Using this feature, you can let report-makers know that you are receiving a high volume of reports of a particular issue and explain how this may affect response times.
You can also use the site-wide messaging feature to provide emergency contact details for certain problems if necessary, or schedule messages to only appear at certain times, such as out of hours.
Response templates
FixMyStreet Pro sends a response to report-makers whenever a report’s status changes to ensure they and anyone subscribed to the report is kept informed of its progress.
With all reports and their responses published publicly on the map, the information you include in them serves as a crucial way to manage expectations and educate about how issues are prioritised.
Templates for responding to reports within different categories can be set up and edited by staff users.
When report volume is high for a particular category, you can edit its templates or even create new ones specifically to communicate that responses may take longer than usual.
Templates can be managed from within the FixMyStreet Pro administration dashboard or they can correspond to an integrated asset management or CRM system.
Extra questions and photos
Photos and extra questions can be included within the FixMyStreet Pro report form to help users understand before they make a report whether the problem they have found meets your intervention criteria.
This can be helpful for issues like blocked drains, which may regularly see predictable increases in reports after heavy rainfall.
Emergency report diversion
During periods of high demand, it’s crucial that emergencies don’t get lost in a queue of other less urgent problems.
In addition to using the site-wide messaging and extra questions mentioned above, it’s also possible to display emergency messaging for certain report categories on FixMyStreet Pro, or even disable those reports entirely.
Avoiding duplicates
It can often be the case that members of the public go to report an issue about which you’re already aware, so when demand is already high, keeping duplication down is paramount.
As well as suggesting possible duplicates within a customisable radius to report-makers and encouraging them to subscribe instead of re-reporting, FixMyStreet Pro also enables you to display on the map scheduled maintenance works to eliminate the need for reports to be made at all.
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For more information about how FixMyStreet Pro works, request a demo from our friendly team.
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Image taken by a member of the mySociety/SocietyWorks team and used with permission.