For the second time in less than a year Knoxville's 311 call center has set a new record for calls in single week.

The 311 staff, which operates out of a small office on the sixth floor of the City County Building, received the record 6,357th call early Friday afternoon.

The office had received more than 6,500 calls near the end of the work day on Friday.

The 311 Call Center has seven operators and they generally can handle most calls in two minutes or less.

 The previous weekly record of 6,356 calls was set last May as a result of a combination of violent late April storms that sent thousands of trees and limbs tumbling and the opening of signups for the city's new recycling program.

That broke a record that dated back to the week following the Thanksgiving holiday in 2007.

The 311 Call Center, established in 2005, typically answers about 5,000 calls during the course of a week.

311 Director Russ Jensen said the numbers indicate that he has a highly-trained staff that makes Knoxville residents comfortable contacting 311 for service requests, to make complaints or obtain information about the city and its services.

"It's been an exceptional week," Jensen said. "We had city property tax notices go out, Department of Safety notices go out at the first of the month and the city rolled out its new recycling program -all in the same week. It's not all complaints. People see those recycling carts and we're getting a lot of questions about the program."

The 311 system is the city's customer service center where Knoxville residents can call a single number to request a service or get information.

The staff takes non-emergency calls for city departments ranging from Public Service to Parks and Recreation to Engineering and Community Service. Those calls include everything from complaints about overgrown lots to questions about traffic tickets and youth athletic league schedules.

Service requests are submitted to the proper departments and entered into the city's tracking system - which allows both the caller and city managers to keep up with the status of the request.