It’s easy to take first responders for granted, but they sacrifice a lot every day for public safety. You can show your appreciation for police officers by saying thank you, paying for a meal, making a donation or writing a letter to the editor. Here at KOVA Corp, we work hard to improve public safety software solutions officers might use on the job. We’d like to show our appreciation for police officers by sharing some of the heroic stories we’ve come across.
Kenneth Minnes, Gloucester Township, New Jersey
Even though Kenneth Minnes was off-duty when he came across a serious single-vehicle crash, he still acted quickly to save two lives. Minnes, a rookie New Jersey trooper, removed two people from a smoking car before it became fully engulfed in flames. One of the occupants of the vehicle was losing blood rapidly and Minnes acted quickly to create a tourniquet out of a tree branch and a shirt which helped reduce the victim’s blood loss until EMTs arrived.
Brandon Lavin, Mesa, Arizona
Officer Brandon Lavin was working a marathon route when he noticed one of the participants having trouble walking. The woman suffered from Multiple Sclerosis and was forced to walk a mile to work because of the marathon. Lavin noticed the woman kept falling so he threw her over his shoulder and took her to work.
Alex Frazier, Los Angeles, California
After an infant was thrown to the ground during a fight between its parents, Officer Alex Frazier performed CPR on the infant, saving its life. This was also the first time Officer Frazier had performed CPR. The infant’s father was later arrested for throwing the baby to the ground.
Donald Thompson, Los Angeles, California
Donald Thompson witnessed a car crash into a wall and explode into flames. He took action to rescue the driver and climbed right in, suffering first and second degree burns. Thompson was able to cut the driver free from his seatbelt and get him to safety before the car became completely engulfed in flames.
Aaron Blumer, Topeka, Kansas
On his way to a burglary alarm, Officer Aaron Blumer noticed a child playing near a pond. The three-year old autistic boy had wandered away from home and by the time Blumer reached the pond, the boy was in the water, near drowning. Blumer pulled him out and brought him to safety.
Rick Bohlmann, Fayette County, Texas
A concerned citizen stopped Deputy Rick Bohlmann to tell him about a stalled vehicle with blood around it. Upon arriving at the car, Bohlmann found a man in the driver’s seat with a gun beside him. Bohlmann secured the weapon and a boxcutter also at the scene and called for emergency medics.
Whether it’s a domestic dispute, an car crash, or a fire, police officers are at the ready and an integral component of public safety. KOVA Corp is proud to provide software solutions for first responders. Whether it’s reliable communication, situation management, or quality assurance, KOVA has the software solution to meet your needs. Contact us today to learn more about our public safety software solutions.
Improving your software systems to better your contact center’s customer service is vital - but you can’t stop there.
Simply putting new programs and processes in place, whatever they are, isn’t going to be effective unless you can obtain and analyze the data that comes out of those efforts. That’s where data analytics comes into play.
So how do you find out if your new policies, technology or incentive programs are delivering the specific results you need? There are several different KPIs your data analytics program should measure.
Overall customer satisfaction
Nothing is more important that customer satisfaction for a call center tasked with providing customer service.
By conducting regular surveys of the customers you deal with, you’ll get hard data on how many of your customers would rate their level of satisfaction as extremely or very satisfied. And while these surveys aren’t always objective, they can at least give you a good idea of whether your efforts are helping or hurting.
Improvement in customer satisfaction
Another effective way to gauge your customer service rating is to keep track of changes in the level of satisfaction over time.
Take a look at the trends in your surveys from before you implemented your changes until a few months after the changes took effect, to see how customer satisfaction may have changed.
Just be ready to accept what the data tells you. Sometimes, the results might not be what you expect; changes don’t always cause a positive trend, and it might take time to find the solution to declining satisfaction. It’s even possible that the older methods you were using were more effective, and you should go back to them.
Customer retention rates
It’s important to think about the future as well as the past, so in addition to keeping track of your center’s satisfaction levels over time, make sure to include questions in your surveys about whether or not a person would use your services again, or if they would recommend your call center to others.
The level of customer recommendation is also known as the Net Promoter Score, and it can often reveal if your changes, your staff and whatever automated services you’ve begun using are truly going the extra mile.
After all, it’s one thing for a customer to say they had a satisfactory experience; it’s another for them to go out into the world and tell others about the experience they had. The Net Promoter Score is therefore a valuable metric for measuring your success.
It’s also important to find out how many of your customers would be likely to purchase further products from the company you represent at your call center. This measurement, also called the Conversion Rate, is another important KPI.
Additional data
Those survey questions are a great general way to proceed, but there’s plenty of hard data you can use to measure your call center’s customer service effectiveness. Has your center’s resolution time improved? How high are your employee productivity rates? How are your employee retention rates?
An effective data analytics program can give you the ability to measure these more intricate statistics and make a determination about your contact center’s effectiveness.
Learn more about our contact center software here.
In October 2017, the Public Safety Aviation Accreditation Commission (PSAAC) and the Airborne Law Enforcement Association announced new guidelines and regulations for public safety agencies using drones as part of their efforts in law enforcement and search-and-rescue operations. These new guidelines were designed not just to get the best possible use out of this still-young drone technology, but to assure the public that public safety agencies were operating their drones both ethically and safely.
These new regulations were specifically designed so that drone operators bore the same obligations to operate their craft safely as manned pilots, and the policies were based around five key points.
Chain Of Command
The PSAAC has stated that any program involving drone use will have a strictly defined chain of command, and that all members of the program will be familiar with it. It will be clear who each member of the program reports to and answers to, and exactly who they will turn to in the event that a decision about drone use has to be made.
Furthermore, all related agencies are required to create extensive and detailed organizational charts listing all authorities involved in the program. Any independent contractors must also sign documentation stating they are aware of and will work within the chain of command.
Program Budget
The new PSAAC guidelines state that any public safety drone program will fully disclose its budget, as well as the source of the funding. The budget must also be enough to comprehensively fund the program, from pilots to repair and maintenance of the drones themselves.
The purpose of this new regulation is two-fold: It ensures that all drone programs have enough of a budget to be effective, and that the public can tell where their tax dollars are going, as that is often the main source of public safety departments’ budgets.
Transparency
The third regulation involves consistent communication between the authorities of the drone programs and the community. The PSAAC policy states that in order for the public to fully embrace a form of technology that is still in its infancy, relatively speaking, they have to have the opportunity to know as much as possible about it, and they should know everything that drone equipment is being used for.
Annual Report
The PSAAC requires that each agency have a policy regarding mandatory annual reports that summarize all of the previous year’s operations. The reports must contain measurements of the drones’ effectiveness, the state of the equipment and how they plan to make improvements. That report must be made available to the public upon request.
This report keeps the public informed on how agencies are using their drone technology.
Inquiries and Complaint Processing
The PSAAC states that there is a mandatory policy for how inquiries and complaints should be handled, and how investigations into the complaints will be conducted. The reports on the complaints will include any member of the agency involved and the employees mentioned in the complaint or inquiry, and it also requires that any cases of drone misuse be immediately reported.
The theme of these new regulations is to ease the mind of a public that’s heard a lot about drones in the news, but might not know many of the facts about how they’re used in public safety. And interestingly enough, the new PSAAC guidelines inspired a less binding list of guidelines for amateur pilots of UAS (unmanned aerial systems) drones.
Great contact center managers know that there’s an important difference between customer service and customer engagement.
Customer engagement - and, going one step further, customer experience - is talked about much more these days, but customer service on its own still has its place in the contact center-customer interaction. Here’s a quick rundown of the difference between service and engagement, and how you can incorporate both into your contact center strategy.
What is customer service?
Customer service concerns the actual advice or help that your call center employees provide to the customers who have bought and are using the products or services of a company that your center represents.
Customer service can be classified as part of the larger customer experience - in essence, the emotional relationship that your customers build with your company.
But while customer service has gotten something of a bad rap these days, with some people thinking it’s too simplistic for today’s consumer, it’s still hugely important to your success.
In fact, 58% of customers are willing to spend more with companies that provide excellent customer service, according to American Express.
What is customer engagement?
Customer engagement, on the other hand, refers to the connection between a customer and a company through multiple channels.
It the comprehensive list of ways by which the company creates a lasting relationship with its consumer base. As traditional communication channels - specifically phone and email - become less desirable to consumers, omnichannel communication through messaging apps, social media, and other methods are ever more important.
Through an active process of building, maintaining and nurturing a relationship with customers, companies can help create brand loyalty, one of the most important factors in a world more crowded than ever with different options.
How to incorporate great customer service and great customer engagement into your customer experience
Just because the two concepts are separate, it doesn’t mean that your call center should only focus on one. You’ve got to consider both when you’re devising strategies to improve how your agents relate to customers.
The key to good customer service in the modern age is to expand beyond the classic, old-school “reactive” model, in which the customer issues are presented and a call center employee works on a solution. Agents in 2018 should be trained to assist customers throughout their journey, whether that means more post-experience surveys or even contacting the customer again to check on the issue.
Contact centers can have even more complex customer experiences to manage, as their customers may not only be the consumers who call in; they’re also the companies that contract with the contact center.
So how do you best create engagement with both? What do your metrics look like in terms of call times, issue resolution, employee retention and complaints? If all these figures are where they need to be, it’s probably safe to say that you have engaged both of the customer groups you’re trying to reach.
If you’re ready to take your customer engagement to the next level, contact us at Kova today.
At the end of last year, Blake Morgan, a Customer Service expert, author, and veteran of companies like Verizon and Intel, wrote an article for Forbes magazine, Customer Service Is A $350 Billion Industry, And It's A Mess.
In it, she looked over the emerging trends that are dictating the current customer service landscape, and made some surprising predictions, particularly about the involvement of upper management in customer service-related companies.
She also mentioned that some companies might be unwilling to make efforts to improve their customer service, simply because of the cost and time that it takes to do so. But she disagreed with this strategy, noting that if companies don’t focus on the customer’s experience, they have no way of improving it.
Morgan focused on five key trends in customer service, ones that she thought would make the most difference in 2018 and beyond.
CEOs Will Become Involved In Customer Service Strategy
Morgan says that since the CEO sets the tone for his or her entire company, the philosophy about treatment of customers must start from the top.
The CEO creates the culture at their company, and that culture should be motivated towards improving the customer service experience, and, not insignificantly, at improving the employee experience. But regardless, it all flows from the boss. If there isn’t a company-wide focus on customer service, that sends a message to the entire staff.
A Customer’s Time is The Most Important Commodity
Morgan also discusses how the modern customer is fed up with impersonal, time-wasting treatment. She says the more a company knows about their customer, the less time that’s wasted on unnecessary questions. Therefore, a structured approach that’s based on as much knowledge as possible about a customer before the conversation even begins is key.
This does not mean that automated systems aren’t still a great help; in fact, AI and chatbots are more important than ever. It simply means that their parameters need to be more precise than ever before.
Embracing Data
In order for AI and chatbots and other automated services to do that, they must take greater advantage than ever of gathering data, combing through it, and determining a course of action for the customer.
Morgan uses Sprint as an example of a company using their data to their advantage. After relying for a long period of time of customer service agents with little time to look through a customer’s data while on a call, Sprint turned to a data solutions company called Pegasystems and used their analytics system to proactively find solutions and special offers to increase customer retention. The result was not only a 40% increase in customer satisfaction, but a 40% increase in customers adding Sprint products, as well.
The Customer Service Cloud
Companies are increasingly relying on cloud-based technology not just for marketing, but for customer service, as well. They can combine information about a customer through data, their digital experience, and personalization to create a new, more efficient way to manager their customer interactions.
Augmented Reality Programs
Morgan says that augmented reality programs, or technology that superimposes a computer-generated image on a user's view of the real world, can give a customer a good idea of what they can expect from an experience before they even contact a company. That allows them to make a better decision on how to make that contact, whether it’s by phone or email or chatbot.
What is your contact center doing to improve your customer service in 2018? If updating your software is on the schedule, contact Kova Corp. to discuss our enterprise workforce optimization solutions, like the Verint Media Recorder Customer Feedback package.
The modern marketplace is a fast-changing place.
In a world where information is available at the touch of a screen - not even a button anymore - companies have to work hard to manage their workforces and keep pace at the same time.
Efficiency is the key to being successful in this modern world, and that goes double for contact centers, where time is of the essence on every call. And for many of those contact centers, the best way to manage these heightened expectations is with the latest in workforce management software.
Workforce management software (or WMS) can increase productivity, allow for better time and attendance tracking, and save time and money, but WMS is a moving target; the technology is changing all the time. So we’ve broken down some of the recent developments in WMS below to help clear away some of the confusion and help your contact center focus on the right things.
What does workforce management do?
In contact centers, WMS tools are typically used by managers for forecasting purposes, monitoring and forecasting inbound and outbound call volumes, and then scheduling the right number of agents to make sure that the center can respond to whatever level of calls are going to be coming in.
Over time, this software became one of the most important tools used in a contact center. By the end of 2017, many experts on the industry were recommending that any contact center with more than 25 employees use some sort of workplace management software application.
Workforce management in the cloud
One of the most recent, and important, trends in WMS is cloud compatibility. This makes the systems easier to use and easier to update.
Now that many WFS programs are can be use in the cloud, contact center managers can try out a new application, and if it doesn’t work with their particular center, they can cancel their contract and give something else a try.
Cloud-compatible WMS systems have dramatically changed the landscape because they’re more accessible, affordable and flexible than on-site systems.
Changes in workforce demographics
Changes in the makeup of our workforce are also increasing the need for WFS solutions. As younger, Millennial workers enter the contact center workforce, they are altering the well-established workplace structure.
There’s also a workforce change that the scheduling aspects of WMS have helped with: Millennials are a bigger part of the workforce than ever before, and this generation of around 75 million people is quite different from the Baby Boomers or Generation X.
Millennials have much different opinions regarding their work/life balance, and they’re no longer as willing to work flexible, perhaps unpredictable schedules. Because of this, workforce management software has become an important tool that allows contact centers to help this new wave of employees find a balance between workplace performance and their personal lives.
The flipside of this equation is that if your software doesn’t include updated scheduling programs, it’s time for an upgrade or your contact center could get left out in the cold by a massive potential workforce when they’re considering where to find a job. For more on purchasing a workforce management tool, read our post “Must-Haves When Buying a Workforce Management Solution.”
It seems like every time you turn around, something new is happening in the world of technology. Things evolve and change at a quick pace and it’s no different when it comes to public safety. The latest developments in public safety technology include things like video analytics, drones, wearables, and data capture apps. Here’s what’s trending on the physical security front.
Video Surveillance
Video surveillance isn’t new but it has come a long way. Many video surveillance systems now incorporate facial recognition and higher quality cameras that are able to provide a much better picture than before. Advances in bandwidth have made it much easier to incorporate high quality video into a physical security management system.
Mobile Devices
Mobile phone apps have revolutionized public safety - however, with the ability to link your security system to your phone comes the added risk that thieves only need to steal your phone to have access to your home or office. Technology updates in this area include improving the function and use of phone locks to prevent something like this from occurring. In the event that your phone is stolen, it won’t be any use to the thief if you’ve locked it down.
Fingerprint Scanning
Biometrics are being incorporated into physical security, making it possible to access security points via fingerprint scanning. This also allows companies to know who is coming and who is going. Fingerprint scanning has even been improved upon with the addition of heat sensors so that now, not only does the fingerprint need to match, but so does the vein structure.
Facial Recognition
As mentioned above, facial recognition coding is one of the advances that has occurred in video surveillance.
But facial recognition in itself isn’t just about matching facial features anymore. The technology has advanced so far that it can even be used to determine whether or not a person is about to do something they shouldn’t. This is done by considering heart rate and eye and retinal changes that are present when someone is being deceitful.
Technological updates to physical security systems such as improved facial recognition, advanced fingerprint scanning, improved safety for mobile devices, and better quality video surveillance all serve to keep our communities safer. Given that technology improves at such a quick pace, you may want to consider advocating for new public safety technology in your organization.
If you’re thinking about upgrading your physical security system, consider KOVA Corp’s Nextiva Physical Security Information Management System. As a company with a longstanding history of excellent customer service and expert applications of systems and software, KOVA Corp is a leader in public safety solutions.
The Physical Security Information Management System allows users to easily capture and view license plate numbers, run investigations, and provide real-time alarms. By installing the Physical Security Information System, you are addressing emerging security needs, enhancing security operations, enabling regulations and compliance, and optimizing your investment in physical security. Contact us today to learn more about the Physical Security Information Management System.
Often your call center agents are literally the voice of your company. For this reason, it’s important to make sure they are trained properly and in accordance with the standards that are acceptable in your company. Following best practices for contact center training can help ensure you provide the ultimate training experience for your employees, which means you’ll benefit from productive, efficient, and attentive employees.
Plan your contact center agent training by asking yourself what you hope your employees will get out of it. This will help make sure your employees have the relevant information they need. Here are some best practices in virtual contact center agent training to make sure you’re investing in the right kind of customer service training.
Consider different learning styles
Everyone learns differently, so it’s important to provide a variety of ways for your employees to learn what they need to know. In a virtual environment, you have options like live video, audio only, question and answer forums, and chat, just to name a few.
Provide opportunities for practice
Many people learn best by doing, so providing opportunities for your employees to practice what they are learning - even before they start working in your contact center - will only help them do their jobs better. Create problems the employees need to solve using actual work systems and techniques. Be sure to provide feedback so employees know how they can improve, as well as what they are doing right.
Get social
Getting social is all about collaboration. When possible, encourage your employees to work together to solve problems. This includes using things like online chat, social media, conference calls, and face-to-face conversations if possible. It’s important for employees to help each other by answering questions and sharing insights.
Workplace scenario role play
In order for agents to get used to the tasks required to perform their jobs, it’s best to simulate on-the-job experiences. Agents can do this by working in virtual teams to solve a problem collectively, each taking on a different role in the scenario.
Reinforce learning
In order to encourage agents to take an active role in their learning, it’s important to evaluate employee performance regularly and provide opportunities and encouragement for agents to learn. Each agent should be considered based on their individual learner progress, as well as class participation.
Considering employee learning styles, providing lots of opportunities for practice, encouraging collaboration, role playing, and reinforcing learning will help make your contact center training more efficient and effective.
If you’re working on streamlining the rest of your contact center operations, the Verint Media Recorder Workforce Optimization Suite might be right for your organization. This video will explain how Workforce Optimization works and how it could benefit your contact center.
As effective as AI and automation can be for your contact center, in terms of managing simpler customer issues, speeding up wait times, and facilitating quick solutions, the idea of automating more of your customer service is bound to make at least some of your employees nervous.
After all, they’ve no doubt heard the talk about about how automation is replacing workers in the auto industry, or how as technology evolves, it can be used to make human staffers obsolete in all manner of industries.
In fact, we recently talked about a new development in the city of Dubai, where the first-ever all-automated police station has just opened. With so many roles being filled by machines, the idea of bringing more comprehensive technology into a contact center can be nerve-racking for your employees.
And the fact is that yes - you might eventually eliminate some positions because of automation. But in truth, AI and automation are better when they complement your human workers, rather than replace them.
Let’s look at an airport as an example of how technology can be useful, but not necessarily helpful. Any bot or computer would be able to tell someone that their flight has been cancelled, but the customer’s reaction to this is an unpredictable factor that’s going to need on-the-spot reaction, and sympathy, from a human being.
This is a high-stress situation that a calm, robotic voice is probably not right for. So while the technology can provide the bare facts, the human employee provides the empathy, the listening skills, and most importantly, the ability to adapt and find a solution based on the person standing in front of them.
Now transfer that scenario to a contact center customer service perspective. Even if an automated line with pre-prepared questions, or a chatbot working with a customer on PC, has been able to isolate the smaller issues and solve them, there will still inevitably be situations that have to be escalated, and those situations with almost always require a skilled, well-trained employee to resolve the situation to the customer’s satisfaction.
The task here for a good contact center supervisor and management team is to figure out how to implement the technological element and the human factor together, so that the customer has a seamless experience.
That decision relies on several different factors, but the basic idea is that the AI function should be used in yes/no question situations that come down to a simple algorithm within the technology.
But for a high-stress event that involves unique problem solving, there is simply no substitute for direct human-to-human conversation.
To use the airport example again, let’s consider a passenger who has lost her luggage. Given the choice between a kiosk and an employee, the passenger will likely choose the employee - especially if the luggage contained anything valuable. And though that employee will almost certainly use some form of technology to help the customer find their luggage, they will be the ones dealing with the changing situation and coming up with solutions.
In short, AI is for quick, easy-to-answer situations that can be solved quickly, thus freeing up your employees to work on the more complex problems your customers might reach out to call center to find solutions for. The ideal situation is for technology to work hand-in-hand with your center employees, not to replace them. That’s the important thing to remember, and the best message you can relay to those who work for you.
For more on contact center technology, read our post “What is Voice Biometrics and How Can It Help Your Business?”
