Director of RVA 311 & Citizen Services

City of Richmond•Richmond, VA

11h

About The Position

The Department of Citizen Service and Response is Richmond’s front door to City government — connecting residents, businesses, and visitors to more than 50 departments and agencies through the RVA 311 platform. Operating across phone, online, and mobile channels, the department handles over 200,000 contacts annually, managed by a team of 33 employees with a budget of $4.2M. The department’s mission is to empower Richmond citizens to get their non-emergency service needs met easily and help City government understand and respond to the public’s needs and concerns with high citizen satisfaction. The Director of RVA 311 & Citizen Services is one of Richmond’s most visible public-facing executive roles. Reporting to the Deputy Chief Administrative Officer of Finance and Administration, this position carries a seat at the City’s senior leadership table. The Director participates in executive-level strategic planning, presents directly to City Council, and is expected to represent the administration’s commitment to resident service with credibility and authority. This is a role for an executive who leads through vision and accountability, not through direct execution. The Director sets the direction, builds the team, holds partners accountable, and ensures that Richmond’s residents — across every neighborhood and every channel — receive service they can trust. Day-to-day operations are delegated to a capable management team; the Director’s attention is on strategy, culture, interagency relationships, and continuous improvement. This role demands more than contact center expertise. Unlike a private-sector contact center director who controls the full service chain, the RVA 311 Director must achieve resolution outcomes through 50+ partner agencies that do not report to them — requiring the political fluency, interagency influence, and public accountability of a senior municipal leader. Candidates with strong operational backgrounds in contact centers or customer service will be competitive only if they also bring demonstrated experience navigating complex organizational and governmental environments. The ideal candidate brings a record of transforming service organizations, fluency in modern contact center technology and AI, and the political acumen to lead effectively in a complex municipal environment. They are as comfortable presenting to City Council as they are walking the contact center floor.

Requirements

Bachelor’s degree in Public Administration, Business Administration, or a closely related field.
Ten (10) years of progressively responsible leadership experience in constituent or customer service operations, public administration, or civic service delivery, including a minimum of five (5) years in a senior executive role with significant organizational and budget accountability.
A demonstrated record of executive leadership may substitute for formal education requirements, subject to approval by Human Resources.

Nice To Haves

Direct experience directing a municipal 311 program, large-scale government contact center, or equivalent multi-channel public service operation.
Hands-on executive experience with enterprise CRM platforms and/or ticketing systems such as AvePoint Citizen Services, Catalis, ServiceNow or Zendesk used in a government service context.
Executive experience leading technology platform implementation, adoption and change management
Experience leading in a unionized public-sector environment.
Graduate degree in Public Administration, Public Policy, or a related field.
Multilingual proficiency, or demonstrated executive experience overseeing multilingual and language access programs.

Responsibilities

Sets the long-term vision and annual priorities for the department, ensuring alignment with the City’s strategic goals and the administration’s commitments to residents.
Advises the City Manager and senior leadership on constituent experience strategy, emerging service gaps, and policy implications of service data.
Leads city-wide change management efforts that require 311’s role to evolve — whether driven by technology, shifting resident needs, or administration priorities.
Establishes and enforces citywide standards for non-emergency service delivery, including service level agreements with partner departments.
Holds City agencies accountable for resolution timelines and service quality on behalf of residents.
Owns the department’s performance outcomes and is the public face of Richmond’s commitment to responsive, equitable service.
Defines the metrics that matter, ensures the organization has the data infrastructure to measure them, and translates performance results into actionable insight for City leadership, elected officials, and the public.
Manages the department’s operating budget of $4.2M, ensuring responsible stewardship of public resources and alignment between funding, staffing, and service commitments.
Presents performance and budget information to the Deputy CAO, City Manager, City Council, and community audiences.
Serves as the department’s Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) Officer and Emergency Management Liaison, with executive accountability for public records compliance and the department’s role in the City’s Emergency Operations Center during declared emergencies.
Builds and sustains the relationships that make 311 work.
Serves as a trusted partner to department directors across the City’s 50+ agencies — driving accountability for service routing and resolution, facilitating cross-agency problem solving, and surfacing systemic gaps that no single department can solve alone.
Maintains executive oversight of the integration between RVA 311 and Cityworks, City’s work order management system, as well as integrations with new systems to ensure that service requests can be handled efficiently by various departments.
Serves as one of Richmond’s most prominent public-facing government officials.
Represents the department with credibility and accessibility in City Council presentations, community forums, media inquiries, and public-facing communications — and is expected to be a recognizable, trusted presence across Richmond’s neighborhoods.
Actively listens to feedback from residents and businesses to ensure the voice of the constituents reach City leadership and informs policy decisions.
Builds a high-performing, equity-centered department culture.
Sets the standard for how the organization recruits, develops, and retains talent across 33 staff.
Delegates operational management to the leadership team while remaining accountable for the overall health of the organization — including staff wellbeing, succession planning, and the department’s capacity to perform under pressure.
Prioritizes the wellbeing of frontline agents who handle complex, emotionally demanding constituent interactions daily.
Ensures the organization has robust supervision structures, de-escalation support, and career pathways that make 311 a place where people want to build careers in public service.
Owns the department’s technology vision, not its implementation.
Sets strategic direction for how RVA 311 adopts and governs emerging technologies — including artificial intelligence, intelligent routing, automated case classification, and self-service digital tools — in ways that improve resident experience without creating new access barriers or channel confusion.
Provides executive oversight of the City’s current 311 platform (AvePoint Citizen Services / Microsoft Dynamics 365) and its integration with Cityworks and other City systems.
Holds vendors and internal technology partners accountable for performance.
Ensures that data generated by 311 — one of the City’s richest sources of real-time resident sentiment and service demand — is used proactively: to identify trends, predict demand, surface inequities, and inform policy and resource decisions across City government.
Ensures digital accessibility and language access compliance across all service channels.
Maintains service continuity and channel redundancy to ensure that all residents can reach 311, regardless of technology access.