Call Center Scheduling Featured Article
Florida Sees Success Tapping Emergency Management Consultant for COVID Crisis
The global COVID-19 pandemic and the effort to vaccinate the public that followed was a strain for many government and municipal agencies, but call centers tasked with disseminating information and asking questions were particularly tried by the pandemic. Many emergency call centers were quickly ramped up, either with new employees or outsourced BPO agencies, but most struggled to cope, resulting in hours-long wait times for callers.
To be fair, few regions of the U.S. have ever encountered such a strong and sudden need for collaboration between the public and private sectors – even between health and emergency management agencies – and the partnerships they did have had never been tested over such a long period of time during a disaster.
The State of Florida had a unique approach in enabling COVID-19 information call centers. It engaged Tidal Basin, an emergency and disaster management consultant, to manage the statewide telephone scheduling and help hotlines and providing training and on-site assistance to officials using the online appointment system to administer vaccines at more than 150 points of distribution (PODs) across the state. Tidal basin also provide technical advice and development support for upgrades and expansion of the online appointment scheduling technology solution.
"Tidal Basin employed talent with decades of experience in emergency management to help the State of Florida set up an effective and equitable vaccine reservation system with exceptional speed and on an unprecedented scale," said Daniel Craig, CEO of Tidal Basin. "Our organizational capabilities are helping Florida provide their residents with greater access to vaccines. Tidal Basin has improved vaccine distribution by providing state and county officials with expanded transparency into vaccination data.”
Craig noted that part of the reason the effort was successful was the addition of both high- and low-tech means to register at vaccine locations, which accommodated more Floridians. Through upgrades in the online reservation portal, Tidal Basin successfully trained government officials to access real-time information about daily vaccination numbers, enabling them to measure results and more effectively plan. Citizens using the system could see appointment availability and walk-up locations around the state without requiring them to be registered in different counties and choose the type of vaccine they prefer.
Edited by Luke Bellos