Resident requests arrive through many channels, often several times for the same problem, and each one is read and re-keyed before it reaches a crew. Classifying requests, matching locations and flagging duplicates gets work to the right team faster, while dispatchers keep control of anything urgent or unclear. These four steps start with your most common request types.

Step 1 — Agree types and owners

Goal: Know where each request belongs.

  1. List the most common request types.
  2. Name the crew or department that owns each type.
  3. Define urgent hazards that need immediate review.
  4. Agree how residents are kept updated.

You finish with: Request types, owners and urgency rules.

Step 2 — Extract and locate

Goal: Turn each request into a clean record.

  1. Connect the web form, app, email and phone-note channels.
  2. Extract type, location, description and photos.
  3. Standardise locations so nearby reports can be matched.
  4. Flag requests with missing or unclear locations.

You finish with: Clean, located requests.

Step 3 — Route and update

Goal: Get work to crews and keep residents informed.

  1. Flag likely duplicates near existing open requests.
  2. Route each request to its owner.
  3. Send urgent hazards to a dispatcher immediately.
  4. Acknowledge each resident and send status updates.

You finish with: Routed requests and resident updates.

Step 4 — Measure and refine

Goal: Show faster routing and fewer duplicates.

  1. Track time to assigned crew.
  2. Track duplicate work orders.
  3. Track requests reassigned after routing.
  4. Adjust types and rules from reassignments.

You finish with: Measured results and better routing rules.

Common pitfalls

  • Urgent hazards waiting in the routine queue.
  • Duplicate work orders for the same problem.
  • Locations too vague to match or dispatch.
  • Residents never hearing what happened to their request.

See it as a workflow

Customer support

Public service request routing

Classify incoming service requests from residents, such as potholes, streetlights, missed collections or blocked drains, add the location and a short summary, flag duplicates and route each one to the right crew or department.

See the workflow

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