 Hey now, today's episode is The Call-Taking Game and here's your host Mayor Betsy Price. Howdy and welcome to It's Your Fort Worth. I'm Mayor Betsy Price and we've got a groovy show for you today. Like any good business, the city has to be efficient and focused on customer service. And Fort Worth is taking customer service to that top level. We created a performance office to help us break down different silos in our departments. Our performance office is working hard to improve the efficiency of employees and our business processes. Our planning and development department's shepherd program is getting big and small projects out the door quickly and more efficiently. Our city's website yourfortworth.org gives citizens a chance to give us feedback and express their thoughts and ideas about the city. Our commitment to customer service helps our city function better but more importantly it serves you better. To help you understand what we're doing, we're kicking it off today with a game called The Call-Taking Game. Let's meet our contestants. Our first contestant today is Kathleen Paramar. Kathleen, welcome. Thank you. Happy to be here. Kathleen is a secretary in the city manager's office and she recently won the 2014 Adman Spirit Award. Way to go. She's a superstar when it comes to customer service. Own that front line, greeting people, talking to them and taking phone calls. Kathleen, tell us your philosophy about customer service. My philosophy is treating the customer, the citizen or the individual you're serving on the other side of that desk the way you want to be treated and if you give that service that you would like to have to that customer then you have accomplished what you set out to accomplish. And you like to give them a little love right? Always got to give them love. I love it. Thank you. Our next contestant is Evelyn Beltran from the Planning and Development Call Center. Welcome Evelyn. Thank you. Nice to be here mayor. We're delighted to have you. Planning and Development's Call Center has already reduced your wait time from six minutes to three minutes and they've reduced call abandonment. That means you don't hang up on us by more than 10 percent. Evelyn, tell us what your office is doing to make customer service better. Well mayor, what we do is we emphasize to our staff that our goal is to provide exceptional customer experience and what we do is we also receive feedback from our customers so we listen to them and via comment cards and then we make changes in our processes to meet their needs. Excellent work and she's got the voice to make this work too. Thank you. Thank you. Our final contestant is council member Dennis Shingleton. Oh I'm so excited about being here mayor. I just really want to win this game. I can't wait to see how you do Dennis. Like all our council member Dennis responds to citizens in his district on a daily basis. Dennis, why don't you share your thoughts on customer service with us? We have to be attentive, prompt and really attuned to the needs of the citizens. How does that work? Is that okay? I think it sounds fabulous. Dennis, this is going to be great. We've met our contestants and now it's time to play the call taking game. Contestants, are you ready? Yes. All right one more time with enthusiasm. Yes. I think they're there. Contestants put on your call taking headsets. We took questions from randomly selected Fort Worth citizens and the first question goes to Kathleen. Kathleen are you ready? Yes indeed. Awesome. Okay here we go. I want to get involved in my neighborhood. Who do I talk to? Well the person or the place you would call would be our neighborhood's office. You can reach them by dialing 817-392-8890. They have lots of information to help you to find out what there is that you have a need for in your neighborhood. So feel free to give them a call at 817-392-8890. Their office hours are 8 a.m. to 5 p.m. Thank you. Thanks Kathleen. Excellent information. You're welcome. Thank you. Second question is for Evelyn. Evelyn are you ready? I'm ready. Awesome. I love it. Evelyn where can I go to learn about zoning? Well to learn about zoning for general questions or processes with zoning you can visit our website at www.fortworthtexas.gov slash planning and development slash zoning info and you can also reach us at 817-392-8028. Evelyn knows her stuff. Now for council member shingleton who needs to behave himself. Dennis are you ready? Yes yes I'm ready. I want to win this game here. Give me the question. We don't want any nerves here. No no I'm not nervous. Okay Dennis here we go. Okay. How can I get in touch with my council member? I got it. I got it. It's every council has a phone number and it's 817-392-880 and then whatever district they're in 2, 3, 4, through 9. Then there's also a way to get them up on the email. It's their name like Dennis dot shingleton at fortworthtexas.gov all written up. I think he's figured this out. Did I win? I don't know yet Dennis we got to tally the point. Okay thanks. You're welcome. Okay the points are tallyed and the winner is the citizens of Fort Worth. The citizens of Fort Worth. Thank you so much to all of our contestants today and thanks to the performance office for helping the city improve customer surface but more importantly thanks to you for watching. We'll see you next time right here on It's Your Fort Worth. Dennis? Now you have new price points. Before we go I want to talk to you about animal adoption. Thousands of animals like Henry and Scout enter the Fort Worth animal shelter each year. There are many animals that need to find a home and you can help. When you adopt from a shelter you become part of the solution to overpopulation. From our shelter you get a pet that's vaccinated for rabies spayed and neutered microchipped and equipped with a city license. Our shelter and adoption center pets come in every shape and size. You've got a great chance at finding your new best friend. To visit our pets go to the Chuck Silcox animal shelter or two of our pet smart charity adoption center. Be sure to visit our website to learn more. So give a four-legged friend a home today. We'll see you next time right here on It's Your Fort Worth. And then try to read it as it is on the screen. And you're when you're looking at the camera my zippers broke this morning so I don't know. Catherine welcome. All right do it again. I should catch up. Can I get makeup first? And thanks to the performance office for helping this city improve customer service. Most importantly thanks to you for watching. You better do that again.