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Operator: Hello, and thank you for calling 311 in New York City.

Arun Venugopal: It's the Brian Lehrer Show on WNYC. Welcome back, everyone. I'm Arun Venugopal from the WNYC and Gothamist newsroom. 20 years of 311 service in New York City. To mark this anniversary, Mayor Adams has released a state of 311 report with new data that shows there have been more than 525 million, that's more than half a billion total 311 contacts since the service launched in-- when did it launch? 2003. He also read off some of the more memorable calls, and maybe you've heard some of these. For instance, "Can you check if my boyfriend is married? I'd like to report a ghost in my window."

I'd like to report my neighbor for waving to everyone on the block." Who hasn't had that complaint? I think all of us. We'll spend a few minutes to end this show talking about some of the ways you've used the info and assistant service over the past two decades and why it matters. Listeners, we're going to open up the phone lines. What have you called 311 for? Did you get the help you needed past and present? 311 dispatchers, we'd also love to hear from you to hear what it's like to be on the other end of the line. That number is 212-433-WNYC, 433-9692 or tweet us @BrianLehrer. With us now for a few minutes is WNYC and Gothamist Reporter Gwynne Hogan. Hi, Gwynne. Thanks for joining us.

Gwynne Hogan: Hey, Arun. Great to be here.

Arun Venugopal: Have you ever had to call 311, Gwynne?

Gwynne Hogan: I was told I was going to get this question, and my weird answer is no. Although I did call last week for this story and I talked to an amazing 311 operator named Love Joy. She picked up in less than a minute. I had a lovely conversation with her.

Arun Venugopal: All right. The new report from the mayor had a list of the top five inquiries and the top five service requests for 2022. Tell us what they were.

Gwynne Hogan: Yes. Last year, you know what, it's routine stuff that people are reporting to 311. The top inquiries were for parking tickets, camera violations, maintenance and apartment buildings, illegal parking. Some of the top service requests were complaints about illegal parking, heat complaints in residential buildings, noise complaints, of course. It's this routine stuff that every once in a while have to report.

Arun Venugopal: Probably some stuff like, "Why doesn't my neighbor have rugs on their floor? It's so annoying," stuff like that.

Gwynne Hogan: "Why are they tap dancing at all hours of the night?"

Arun Venugopal: We also have in addition to all the mundane stuff, some more notables 311 calls over the years. If you've seen the movie, Everything Everywhere All at Once, which just won all these awards, I guess raccoon makes an appearance.

Gwynne Hogan: Oh, that's right. One of the top calls that's right, this was a caller from 2014 wanted to report a raccoon eating lasagna on their front porch. I don't know what maybe animal control could have gotten involved there.

Arun Venugopal: It's an idyllic image, isn't it? Just sitting on the porch in the evening.

Gwynne Hogan: Little knife and fork. There's actually a lot of animal-related complaints. "A cat is terrorizing someone through a screen door." That was in 2003. "Can I claim my dog as a dependent on my taxes?" That's a great question, 2006. Oh, somebody called, let's see. There was one about a goat iya in 2016, "A goat is tied to the stairwell in my building," that actually seems like could cause some concern. "Can I use Medicaid for my cat surgery?" That was a call in 2009. Lot of animal complaints. [crosstalk]

Arun Venugopal: Some interesting questions. Got to come back on that one. We have callers are lining up. Let's take a call from Mary in Brooklyn. Hi, Mary. You're on the air.

Mary: Hello. I'm from Brooklyn. I just wanted to thank all the 311 operators. They're amazing. Every single time that I've called, they've been informative, patient helpful. I usually call for things like sanitation if I'm putting out a chair or a couch, the pickup, and they're spot on in helping me with the pickups for sanitation. If you have a question about your water bill, et cetera, they're amazing. I just want to appreciate them today.

Arun Venugopal: All right. Shout out to all the 311 call-takers. Have you ever had any particularly unusual situations that you've had to call in about, Mary?

Mary: I did. I once did a cleanout for a family and I asked them how many bags can you put out and they said, unlimited. Oh, I shouldn't say that on the air, but as long as it doesn't take up the sidewalk. They said it's true. I called them several times just to back it up and they said it's unlimited bags you can put out because they want people to clean out their places.

Arun Venugopal: All right. Thank you for that call, Mary. We have an expert on hand. Why don't we turn to them for a few minutes? Joseph Morrisroe, the Deputy Commissioner of NYC311. Deputy Commissioner Morrisroe, welcome to WNYC.

Joseph Morrisroe: Thank you. Glad to be here.

Arun Venugopal: Thanks for joining us. Deputy commissioner, can you tell us about the New Yorkers who essentially power 311 and how they're trained to respond to this incredible often bewildering range of calls and concerns?

Joseph Morrisroe: Yes, for sure. I can start by telling you they are New Yorkers. They're from all five boroughs. They are family and friends, they're neighbors, they're community members. They are really essential to connect New Yorkers with city government. They're also very dedicated to serving their fellow New Yorkers. They're here 24 hours a day every day, and they're committed to providing the best possible customer service when customers do call in. I'll say they are also very busy. On average, a 311 call center representative will talk to 12,000 New Yorkers over the course of a year.

Arun Venugopal: We have a call or a question from caller by the name of Joe. It has to do with jurisdiction, Deputy Commissioner. I guess this listener actually tweeted at us that they've called a number of times about things like potholes but saw no action taken. Is that a challenge for 311 in a situation like that?

Joseph Morrisroe: For any condition, we get if it's something that the city provides a service or a response to, it's something that we're set up to handle. If someone wants to report a pothole, there's multiple ways you can do that: you could call, you can do it via Twitter, you can do it through the 311 mobile app, and there's a process. There's a standard process that goes through where information is collected so the responding agency can have enough information to go out and effectively address the issue.

In this case, if it's a pothole. We'll take a service request, that's the term we use, and that'll go to the Department of Transportation who will then action that by going out and addressing the pothole. It's a structured approach. That's a fairly routine approach and one that from a total perspective for an example 311 services over 3 million service requests over the course of a year.

Arun Venugopal: I'm curious about this is clearly 311 as distinct from 911 but is this a stressful job? Do your call takers, these operators have to deal with some pretty stressful situations as well?

Joseph Morrisroe: Yes, they sure do, and appreciate you asking that. A lot of the calls that they handled you mentioned earlier in the segment that they could be considered standard and often they are. For the customer that's calling, it may be the most important thing to them in that moment, so we recognize that. Certainly, a number of the calls can be a point where the customer is looking to have a human contact and they've got a stressful situation in their life, which in turn it gets imparted on the agent themselves.

They will deal with situations where there's an urgency or there's just a heartstring tug of something that someone needs. The main goal of the agent is to find the right information for that customer. The city provides a resource. 311 job is to find that resource, connect that customer with that resource. Along the way, the agent will get invested in that conversation with the customer and it can take a toll. We look out for that. We guard for that.

There's a number of things we can do up to and including letting the agent take a moment, decompress, sometimes go to our quiet room and relax a little bit, have a conversation with their supervisor or someone else if they've gone through a situation like that. It is a fact of what happens and it goes back to the fact that they are essential workers. They are the frontline serving New York City. That's what happens when you're in that situation.

Arun Venugopal: Deputy Commissioner, please stay on and we're going to take a call from Lyric in Bushwick. Hi, Lyric.

Lyric: Hi. How are you all doing today?

Arun Venugopal: Great, thank you. You have a question or a comment either for our listeners or for Deputy Commissioner Morrisroe?

Lyric: I have a comment. I find 311 to be very antiquated. The dropdown menu is problematic. We've had issues with our doors, the front door to our building, our vestibule doors. They weren't fire rated. There were a lot of issues with gaps and things of that sort. 311 does not have the ability to make that complaint.

The only option you have in your dropdown menu is broken or missing, which becomes a problem. There's a lot of issues that 311 is unable to deal with because it's an antiquated dropdown menu. I think we could do better. Quite personally, I think 311 should be making appointments with people so that we actually know when HPD is going to show up rather than just taking a complaint that usually goes nowhere. We can do better and we should do better.

Arun Venugopal: Lyrik, before you leave, have you called 311 many times?

Lyrik: We've had to call 311 over 500 times.

Arun Venugopal: Wow.

Lyrik: Yes. We are in a building that is a 421a building that was fraudulently signed off by two corrupt DOB inspectors. We've had a lot of issues. HPD rather than addressing these issues decided to just take us over to 311. I've spent many, many hours of my life trying to figure out how to make a complaint, how to put it in so that it goes to the right person. I just think, honestly, our system is antiquated and we need to do better.

Now, as for the quiet space, I have no idea what he's talking about. 311 operators, as much as you are applauding them, don't really receive the benefits of their accolades. They had to work through the pandemic. They weren't allowed to work from home. They had to go into the office, which is very close quarters with very little protections. It's offensive in my opinion. Again, if we're going to value these people, then we should probably treat them a little bit better.

Arun Venugopal: Thank you, Lyrik, for your call. Deputy Commissioner Morrisroe, I know there's a lot there, but this is your chance to respond to Lyrik.

Joseph Morrisroe: Thank you for that opportunity. I will echo what Lyrik mentioned that we can do better. That is something we are always looking to do, whether it be on the technology side, whether it be on the process side. There's always an opportunity to do better. In the customer service business, you get that feedback every day. It's something that we do a lot of, whether it's survey our customers or tap into our agents and our employees to give us feedback on things that can be done to improve the process. Then, in turn, we will work with our city agency partners because it is indeed a partnership there. I appreciate those comments. It's something that for this customer and for any customer, we will look into further.

Arun Venugopal: Briefly, Deputy Commissioner Morrisroe, Lyrik's question about trying to evolve 311 to where you can actually set up appointments and stuff like that, is that something that has been considered or is viable?

Joseph Morrisroe: There are a number of things that we do. It will vary based on the request that's being made. It might be a request to repair something from an infrastructure standpoint, or in the case the customer referred to, I would think that sounds like what we call an apartment maintenance complaint. To other things where you're looking to book an appointment for a service or something to that effect, what we typically will do is collect the information or connect the customer to the service itself or to the appointment itself.

A lot of that will vary because city agencies may have different ways of approaching or servicing that. We are aligned with what they have. Where we are today versus where we were just 10 years ago and certainly where we were 20 years ago is much further along. The more we can do, whether leveraging technology, having the customer be able to self-serve is all part of our plan.

Arun Venugopal: All right. Let's try to take a quick call from Larry in Brooklyn Heights. Larry, you're on the air. Do you have something you can say in 15 seconds or less?

Larry: Sure. The gray area between 911 and 311. You call about a traffic problem. You call 911, they say it's 311. They put the 311 operator on the line. They say it's 911. Meanwhile, the truck is still parked on the approach to the Brooklyn Bridge and traffic is backed up to Sunset Park. It seems that there's a turf battle there.

Arun Venugopal: Is there? Thank you so much for that call, Larry. It sounds like a legitimate concern a lot of people have is this gray area.

Joseph Morrisroe: I appreciate Larry's specific situation. I'm not familiar with it, but I can say this, it's one of the areas we really focus on a good, strong partnership between 311 and 911 and our partners at NYPD. It's a very key thing we do right in the training program and just internally, we have a little bit of an ethos. If a call comes into a 311 agent and it could potentially be a danger, whether it's a hazard or an incident or a situation, we train our agents when in doubt, route.

By that I mean, if you're not sure if it sounds like it's an emergency, if it's one of these words that suggest an emergency, then connect 911 right away. 911 are the professionals. We let them make that decision on whether it's public safety related, life and death related. Then they'll handle that if it is. If it turns out to not be something that 911 would handle, then the 311 agent will continue to take care of it. A good item to raise. [crosstalk]

Arun Venugopal: Thank you, Deputy Commissioner Morrisroe, and also thank you to my other guest, WNYC and Gothamist reporter, Gwynne Hogan. Thanks to you both for joining us today.

Gwynne Hogan: Thanks, Arun.

Joseph Morrisroe: Thanks very much for the opportunity.

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