The vendor required to provide after-hour answering services to support of the city’s operations, activities and programs during night, holiday, weekend hours, or on an as-needed basis.
- Hours of service
• Perform 24-hour services and require answering services to receive and dispatch on-call staff appropriately beyond the normal business hour.
• It is estimated that the answering service will receive approximately 200-400 calls per month.
• Anticipated contractor hours:
1. 4:00 pm to 8:00 am Monday through Friday, Saturday 24 hours, Sunday 24 hours.
2. Firm will be required to answer calls for the below city departments and service areas:
o Parks and forestry
1. Forestry, recreation centers and programs, marina operations, parks, landscape
o Public works
1. Electrical, radio, telephone, equipment maintenance, janitorial, streets and utilities, illegal dumping, sewer, storm, sandbags, sidewalks, traffic maintenance meters, facilities, building maintenance, graffiti, spills
o Planning – toxics
1. Hazardous materials incidents
o Health, housing, and community services – environmental health
1. Senior centers, food facility fires, large sewer spills, medical waste, other city departments requesting assistance including police, fire, etc.
o Information technology – 311 customer service
1. Coverage includes all incoming calls to 311 customer service line. (city clerk, city center, city attorney, finance admin, finance cs, finance refuse, pw transportation, pw street and sewer, vital stats) calls will be logged and transmitted to 311 customer service Catalis Customer relationship management (CRM) interface.
- Services
• Staff answer all calls with the standard greeting, “thank you for calling the city of afterhours answering service, my name is ____, how may i help you?”
• After hours operator to contact city staff based on caller situation and provide staff with necessary information for follow-up.
• Page, text, call, or email employee as directed.
• Update and maintain a city emergency contact list daily – city to provide information.
• Firm will email the city quarterly to confirm current contact list for accuracy.
• Firm will update the contact list per instructions from the city.
• Provide each account with a monthly report of usage broken out by topic.
• Attend periodic billing and service review meetings.
• Work with city staff to update and change information as schedules and work assignments change.
• For 311 coverage: for urgent public works, forestry or toxic situations occurring during coverage period, contact department agency directly after logging and documenting case in the Catalis CRM interface.
• Available to meet with the contract project manager(s) or designee on a quarterly basis, where and when specified by the city to review the previous performance periods.
- Documentation
• All calls received, and actions taken will be emailed to each city of account on the next business day for follow-up by city staff during normal business hours.
• Call detail requirements will be outlined by each department, but should at a minimum include:
o Time
o Name of caller and contact information
o Location
o Nature of problem
o To whom the call was dispatched and the time including all attempts.
• For 311 coverage: document call information to 311 customer service via email and into the Catalis CRM.
• Provide a monthly report to each account of total number of calls by type.
• The ability to bill each account separately.
• Provide each city account with a monthly activity report attached to the invoice.
• The report will contain dates, time and actions taken to ensure that calls were properly handled.
- Emergencies.
• If an emergency event is called by the city, city staff may continue to answer the phones past the scheduled time until the emergency is ended before turning phones over to the answering service.
• Calls shall be routed to a back-up location or answered by out-of-state staff in case of an emergency at your location or in the city to the best of your abilities.
• Email warnings regarding hazardous material spills from the office of emergency services will be sent to firm.
• Depending on the nature and severity of the spill, environmental health, toxics, and public works will need to be notified for staff to respond.
- Restrictions
• Use AI as a substitute for having human agents answering and dispatching calls.
• AI may be used as an internal tool to support the vendor’s agents, but it may not replace the use of human agents.
• Also follow all applicable state laws and regulations regarding usage of AI.
• Vendor may not outsource calls to human agents residing outside the country.
- Questions/Inquires Deadline: January 22, 2026
