Call Center Scheduling Featured Article
Washington 911 Call Center Undergoing Upgrade
If there is one rule for managing 911 call centers that has been tested and proven time and again, it’s that they must be sufficiently staffed to be successful. Emergencies and disasters do not follow logical and predictable patterns and trends. It’s imperative that 911 call centers be online and fully staffed at any given time.
A recent analysis of the 911 center in Skagit, Washington found that the center is not properly staffed, however, and the report was far from the exception in the world of emergency call centers. The report, conducted by APCO International, a public safety organization, found that the Skagit emergency dispatch center lacks sufficient staff and planning that would enable the call center to operate during disasters.
In order to avoid mandatory overtime, the Skagit center would need around 50 full-time employees on staff, according to APCO. Yet, the center only has 35 employees, with a budget for just 42. The organization also surveyed staff members at the call center and found that an overwhelming 83 percent were frustrated with the amount of mandatory overtime assigned to them.
Sadly, that frustration is echoed throughout the call center market, which has one of the highest turnover and churn rates in the country. Frustrated agents typically complain about mandatory overtime, erratic and unpredictable scheduling, and long training periods that lead to boring and monotonous on the job tasks.
In Skagit’s case, APCO recommends the call center work on strategic planning as well as outlining short- and long-term goals. The 911 center could also speed up its hiring process by recruiting on a regular basis and shortening its 21.5-week training period to fall in line with the national average of 16.5 weeks. Other recommendations for Skagit include building more redundancy into its emergency communications network to ensure availability during disasters.
The Skagit 911 Board has been working to beef up its technology since the report findings, and is building more radio towers to expand coverage and redundancy throughout the county. The $2 million project will provide encrypted communications for local law enforcement agencies.
The Skagit project mirrors activity at other 911 centers throughout the country that have been found to be understaffed and unreliable during the past year. The California legislature is working on a $1 billion initiative to bring technology updates to the state’s hundreds of call centers to ensure they are better prepared to mitigate disaster.
California experienced an average of 13 outages to 911 services a month last year, with parts of the state’s 911 call center network down for more than an hour. The 911 call center in Fort Wayne, Indiana experienced a historic outage this year that forced callers to dial a non-emergency number to receive services. A CenturyLink (News - Alert) data center outage last year forced 911 call centers in seven states to push out emergency alerts with alternative phone numbers.
Edited by Erik Linask