CASE STUDY
E911 Operations Assessment
Client Background and Overview
A large municipality that serviced approximately 600,000 residents contracted Turnkey Solutions to evaluate and advance its E911 Call Center operations. They had recently relocated their E911 Call Center operations to a newly built, state-of-the-art facility with a high level of security and exceptional technological and infrastructure capabilities that included voice over IP telephony, ergonomically designed furniture, rest and quiet space areas, new information systems, and dispatch to digital radio capabilities, as well as power redundancy, among others. However, the call center was experiencing incidents of delayed or inappropriately handled calls that required immediate review and was falling short of the national standard of answering 90% of its calls within 10 seconds. The municipality recognized the urgency of the situation and engaged Turnkey Solutions to ensure that the Call Center’s processes were efficient and effective, resulting in timely and high-quality emergency response for those in need.
Challenges
Turnkey Solutions was asked to address the following operational challenges:
- Conducting a thorough review and analysis of current policies and procedures, supervision and oversight, documentation, internal and external information dissemination, and quality control processes.
- Reviewing the approach and coordination of communication with the Police Department and the Fire and Rescue Department personnel and suggesting changes or adjustments as appropriate.
- Assessing personnel management of the center, including analysis of staff turnover rates, disciplinary processes, and other issues such as recruitment, training, quality assurance, and determining optimal staffing requirements.
- Conducting a high level assessment of how the call center’s technology was being used, including whether it was being used to its fullest capability, technology gaps, and an audit of the inbound/outbound call trunking design for the E911 Call Center.
- Conducting an assessment of operational workflow efficiency, including the operational/business process workflows.
- Assessing performance metrics utilization.
Solution
Based on their analysis, Turnkey Solutions provided the client with over 45 specific best practice recommendations, which the client quickly adopted. The recommendations included both operational and process improvements, including the purchase and implementation of a workflow management solution, and recommendations to work with their current telephony vendor to achieve needed customization in reporting and transfer capabilities.
Part of the issue was that it was taking so long to hire operators that by the time the hiring decision was made, many of the good candidates had found other employment. Scheduling was also a major issue, which resulted in overtime costs that were 37% over budget. A detailed analysis of the hiring process yielded numerous recommendations for streamlining the process and making it more efficient without sacrificing security. Additionally, subtle changes in their key performance indicators (KPIs) and the metrics used to measure them resulted in 911 operators being rewarded for positive behavior, rather than finding ways to get around the metric, which had actually impacted the center negatively. Finally, ongoing discussions and partnership with the telephony vendor allowed for new reporting capabilities to be defined that better served the client.
Impact
Through collaboration with E911 staff and best practice recommendations, Turnkey Solutions was able to help the client achieve its goal of answering 90% of its calls within 10 seconds. In addition, with the purchase and implementation of the workflow management system, the E911 Call Center is positioned to recapture its overtime costs.