ALBUQUERQUE, N.M. — 311 is taking tens of thousands of calls per month. The department’s goal is to answer 80% of all calls in under 30 seconds, and leaders say it’s exceeding that.

“It really is the go-to point for any question that you might have about City Hall and about local community and anything Albuquerque,” said Mark Leech, the director of CABQ’s Technology and Innovation Department.

Whether it’s a homeless encampment, graffiti near your business, or any other non-emergency, 311 is the number to call.

“It’s really like having many sensors in the community, we have a real, we have a much better, much improved pulse on what’s going on because we can see the calls coming in,” Leech said.”We can see the tickets, we can see the kind of tickets we have, and then we can base our actions and our resourcing on those tickets.”

Agents answer between 80,000 and 90,000 calls per month. In January, they spiked to 98,000.

Leech credits a partnership with Senior Affairs to schedule tax appointments for seniors.

“This was a scheduling service put in place by Senior Affairs to act as a bridge between like, to get the seniors to file taxes on time and as quickly as possible,” Leech said.

Beyond the people they serve, the other priority is efficiency.

“The goal is to answer 80% of calls in less than 30 seconds, and we exceed that each month,” Leech said.

Then the issue gets assigned to a specific city department, which takes more time.

“It could be a couple of days or it could be a couple of months,” Leech said. “It really depends on the kind of call you’ve got. Sometimes with potholes, those I know for a fact that they have a longer schedule.”

But for some issues, it can be just a few hours. KOB 4 visited a downtown location of a litter complaint filed Monday morning. By Monday afternoon, it was clean.

“We truly are the one-stop shop. We are the concierge for the whole City Hall,” Leech said.

311 is still looking to improve. There’s an open community survey happening now, and feedback already shows a few trends.

“The 18 to 24 demographic, that’s one where they typically don’t use 311,” Leech said. “So that’s something that we’re kind of like, really trying to figure out how do we reach that demographic? One of the things we’re looking at is whether or not we could use something like a chatbot, o somehow use AI in the mix to help.”

The community survey will be open through April 11. 311 has 31 agents right now, and four openings.