Agencies work together to handle voter questions

ATLANTA – Governor Sonny Perdue's vision for making state government more customer friendly led to thousands of Georgians having their election questions answered quickly and correctly over the past week and a half.

As calls to the Secretary of State's office began to pick up with the start of early voting, the Governor's Office of Customer Service offered to train its “1.800.georgia” call agents to answer questions about polling locations and hours, registration verification and acceptable forms of proof of identification. On October 24, OCS began taking the overflow calls and they answered more than 13,000 calls through Election Day with an average wait time of less than one minute.

“Whether it is shorter lines for driver's license services or quickly answering a phone call to handle a voter’s question, state agencies are committed to working together and providing Georgians with quality customer service,” Governor Sonny Perdue said. “We have made great strides in making state government more efficient and more accessible to Georgians and this is just the latest example of those efforts.”

On Election Day alone, the “1.800.georgia” service handled more than 3,100 calls. Almost 50 percent of the callers wanted to know if they were registered to vote and the location of their polling place. Approximately 10 percent of the callers were seeking clarification on acceptable forms of photo identification.

“I want to thank Governor Perdue for assisting Georgia's voters by dedicating the Governor's Office of Customer Service and ‘1.800.georgia’ to answering voters’ questions,” Secretary of State Karen Handel said. “I commend these teams for providing outstanding customer service to their fellow Georgians.”

Even an unannounced fire drill on October 29 did not interrupt the “1.800.georgia” service. Because 16 agents for “1.800.georgia” work remotely, calls were still handled and questions were answered. In addition to providing uninterrupted service during an unplanned event such as a fire drill, the remote agents also support Governor Perdue’s Workaway initiative to save gas, reduce traffic congestion and improve employee satisfaction.

Calls peaked on Election Day as other staff from the Governor’s Office of Customer Service helped man the phones.  “No responsibility of government is more important than ensuring the citizen’s right to vote,” said Joe Doyle, Director of the Governor's Office of Customer Service.  “This was a great example of state agencies sharing resources to meet the needs of Georgians, getting them the right answer on their first call.”

“1.800.georgia” is a one-stop phone number for information on state services that was created by Governor Perdue to provide Georgians better customer service, quicker response times and fewer call transfers to get questions answered. 

Calls in to the call center totaled 13,347 between October 24 and November 4. On Election Day alone, agents answered 3,159 calls. The average speed of answering the calls was 48 seconds.

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