It's 311 Day! Time to celebrate service innovation
March 11, 2024, 5:08 p.m.

KNOXVILLE - The City of Knoxville invites residents to celebrate March 11 as 311 Day and take this opportunity to share the valuable, free service known as Knoxville’s phone number.

311, operated by the City’s Center for Service Innovation since May 2005, is a leader among municipal call centers. Knoxville’s 311 has been recognized three times – most recently in 2023 – as the top 311 in the nation; no other city has been more than once.

How does 311 work? A resident calls 311 (or 865-215-4311 for some cell phone carriers) and is connected to a customer service representative. The rep creates a service request within the system that goes directly to the department that will respond to the request. The ticket is closed when the department completes the request.

The top five most common service requests received include: dirty lots; bulky solid waste pickup; municipal court calls; missed trash pick-up; and trash cart issues.

In 2023, 311 made more than 40,000 service requests and 180,000 customer contacts.

In a survey regularly conducted of people who have contacted 311, 99 percent of users indicated they would recommend 311 to neighbors. In addition to high scores for customer service, 311 receives kudos for its ability to pivot to meet community needs.

During the week of frigid temperatures and roughly 10 inches of snow in January, 311 assisted the joint City-County Emergency Operations Center (EOC) to handle a wide array of calls for assistance, from people enquiring about road conditions, to dialysis patients trying to get to treatment facilities. The Center remained open throughout the event and handled as many as 1,700 calls in one day.

The MyKnoxville mobile app has received 4,049 service requests from 2,781 users since its launch in March 2021.

Learn more about the services 311 provides at KnoxvilleTN.gov/311. Visit KnoxvilleTN.gov/app to download the MyKnoxville app for Apple or Android.