When it comes to emergency situations, there’s no substitute for a highly efficient 911 program. Best practices in 911 quality assurance include reviewing prior performance, keeping operators informed of how they are being monitored, including transparent assessment criteria, and ensuring the latest in data analytics technology is used for the most accurate results.
There are a number of things you can do to ensure that your 911 calls are being conducted at the highest standard, but in order to do this, you need to be sure your quality-assurance program is looking at the right data. Here are a few things you can do to improve your 911 quality assurance program.
Look at the whole call.
While call intake is important, it’s also important that the entire call is monitored to see how the operator handles the call while callers are waiting for help to arrive, as well as ending the call at the appropriate time. The whole call is important.
Review the most relevant data.
In order to improve quality assurance, you first need to determine what aspects of your program you want to improve so you can monitor the right data. It doesn’t make sense to monitor something that doesn’t have any bearing on your quality-assurance program. That’s just a waste of time.
Involve call operators in the process.
Employee cooperation is key when it comes to a quality-assurance program. Informing staff as to how the quality-assurance process works is of utmost importance. Well-informed staff are happy staff and more likely to cooperate to bring about improvements.
Make the review process timely.
Your quality-assurance program should aim to review and analyze data as quickly as possible so changes can be made and monitored in a timely manner. It’s more difficult for staff to remember a call they took two weeks ago than a call they had two days ago. Timely reviews will help your staff implement changes as quickly as possible.
Let technology do the work for you.
There are a number of software programs that can help you with your 911 quality assurance program. Carefully research which one will help you the most. A great quality assurance software solution will take a lot of guesswork out of the review process.
911 dispatching is much different today than it once was. Not only has the on-the-job technology changed, but so has the technology used to evaluated the process. You’ll want to look for a program that produces results that are easy to interpret so you’ll know exactly where you need to make changes. From performance management to data analytics, KOVA Corp has the quality-assurance solution you’re looking for.
We are all about communication and quality assurance at KOVA Corp. Our public safety software solutions enable 911 call centers to function more efficiently by monitoring calls and analyzing data to determine where improvements are needed. To learn more about how KOVA Corp can help you improve your 911 quality assurance program, contact us today.
When you are in the heat of the moment dealing with an emergency, it’s easy to feel overwhelmed. Having a good emergency communication plan will help personnel do their jobs to the best of their abilities during an emergency situation. Emergency communications training is key to ensuring that things go as smoothly as possible when you are dealing with an emergency.
Emergency communications plans detail what needs to be done in an emergency as well as any potential risk areas that should be carefully monitored. An emergency response plan should be well thought out in order to consider as many scenarios as possible. It should also be clearly communicated to all personnel involved.
Here are five best practices in emergency communication.
1. Know Who’s in Charge
It’s a good idea to have a team within your organization that is responsible for emergency planning and preparedness. Staff need to know who they should report to in case of an emergency. Depending on the size of your organization, you might want to create an emergency communications team.
2. Use Reliable Technology
In the event of an emergency, you’ll want to be sure your means of communication are reliable. Using reliable technology can mean the difference between a catastrophe and an emergency that is handled with relatively little disruption to your organization. Even if it means advocating for new public safety technology in your organization, it will be well worth the cost and effort.
3. Consider All Levels in Your Organization
Everyone in your organization needs to know what will happen in the event of an emergency. Therefore you need to make sure all levels of personnel are informed of your emergency communications plan and are trained in the appropriate measures should an emergency arise.
4. Know Your Audience
It’s important that your communications plan clearly states who is to be notified in emergency situations during and after the event. Your emergency communication plan should include a hierarchy of all the organization’s stakeholders, so it’s clear who should be notified first in the event of an emergency.
5. Script Your Messages
Your organisation can brainstorm possible emergency situations and create appropriate responses to each one. Scripts are helpful when doing this, and the scripts should be reviewed and practiced on a regular basis. It’s also a good idea to note how the script will be communicated in each situation (text, website, emergency call, etc.) so staff will automatically know without having to think about it in the event of an emergency.
Review your organization’s emergency communication plan to make sure it includes these five best practices. It’s important to know who in the organization is responsible for the plan, incorporate reliable technology, make sure the entire organization is informed, know your audience, and practice scripted messages.
Verint Media Recorder Public Safety software by KOVA Corp is a packaged solution that integrates multi-channel recording with critical functionality to improve the performance of emergency communication. KOVA Corp’s public safety solutions allow responses to emergencies to be as efficient as possible. To learn how KOVA Corp can help improve emergency communication in your organization, contact us today.
In 2015, after nearly 50 years in existence, the 911 Association (otherwise known as NENA: the National Emergency Number Association) introduced the new standard for Quality Assurance and Quality Improvement.
The quest for a unified standard was long in coming and today constitutes the backbone of best practices for 911 operation centers and the staff comprise it.
Even so, the Standards left open to interpretation many of its recommendations (answering “what’ but not necessarily “how”), and an exploration and strategic “unpacking” of some of NENA’s central tenets is warranted for further development and delivery of quality-controlled 911 service.
The 911 operators who receive incoming calls are at the “front lines” of dispatch and are a critical component of service quality. The degree to which operators skillfully and comprehensively navigate incoming calls - and the degree to which they are capable of improving their own performance to meet quality criteria - is the degree to which optimal service can be rendered.
As with the improvement of any skill, review of prior performance is necessary in order to learn from mistakes of commision or omission and adjust performance accordingly. It is important for quality assurance (QA) personnel (those who oversee and manage performance standards and ongoing training for 911 operators) to review the entire call with the operator (and not just the intake portion).
The reason for this is that there are many opportunities prior to the intake portion of the call - and following it - to handle the call in such a way that the intake portion is adversely affected. Without operators and QA personnel reviewing the entirely of the call together, an adequate understanding of why a call has not been optimally navigated is difficult if not impossible to grasp, leaving both QA personnel and operators at a loss for how to improve their performance.
It is also important that QA personnel engage operators in a way that conveys that monitoring and random review of calls (a minimum of 2% of all calls taken) is not a way of “spying on” or “micromanaging” them but rather a means by which they can reap the benefit of being informed by their own performance, thus providing a basis for improvement that results in not only better service for callers but in greater ease and efficiency for the operator. (QA monitoring and review must be framed as a win-win proposition for both callers and operators.)
Ideally, operators should be given “freedom within a framework.” In other words, though certain objective criteria must be met that allow little if any room for interpretation or deviation (such as identification of the nature and location of an emergency), there are other more subjective variables that may not apply equally to every call, and operators should be free to use their own best judgment in negotiating these variables.
Assessment criteria and scoring of QA monitoring and review should be transparent to operators and include both objective and subjective factors. Without transparency, operators are put in the unfair position of conforming to QA criteria that is invisible to them (they are “shooting blind”) and will be unable to make connections between their scoring and performance, thus precluding them from targeted improvement.
Without assessment of and transparency to both objective and subjective factors (for example, whether the address is correctly received and how calm the operator remains in the face of a caller’s agitation), critical interrelationships between the two will remain ambiguous and unavailable for continued attention and improvement.
QA personnel also do well to be aware of various “learning styles” through which operators may be most “available” to coaching and improvement. For example, some operators may be visual learners who will make the most of their reviews if they are given a graph, pie-chart, or other “visual aid” of their performance.
Other operators may be audio learners, who will benefit most directly from listening to their call - being vocally prompted beforehand to listen for the fulfillment - or lack thereof - of specific criteria.
“Relational” learners - those who learn primarily through the emotional rapport between them and QA personnel - will benefit enormously from a warm, supportive, “I believe in you” attitude on the part of the QA agent.
QA personnel and QA programs should “build in” each of these and other learning styles to facilitate the training and improvement of the performance of a diversity of learners.
Reviews of monitored calls should be timely and provide opportunity for feedback - not only from QA personnel but from operators. As front line emergency personnel, operators have an “inside” view or “boots on the ground” perspective that QA personnel stand to be continually informed by.
Reviews should not be “monologues” or one-way communications between QA personnel and operators, but ongoing dialogues (two-way communications) between them in which both stand to be generatively informed by the other in the service of ongoing recalibration and refinement of QA standards themselves.
Last, QA systems that incorporate the latest in data analytics to detect overarching trends across calls are of paramount importance. Even with optimal allocation of resources, human QA personnel can monitor and productively review only a tiny fraction of overall calls. (The reason that NENA issued a benchmark of 2% of total calls monitored is not because this is an ideal number for quality assurance assessment and improvement-coaching - far from it - but because 2% is the uppermost limit with which most QA personnel can reasonably contend.)
Advanced data analytics systems can successfully track and monitor 100 percent of calls, thus identifying critical QA-related trends that are only detectable across large sample sizes. Additionally, while a human QA agent can identify, interpret, and effectively manage perhaps two dozen criteria, data analytics can identify, interpret, and effectively manage hundreds of criteria (while generating new criteria through “smart” algorithmics), “compressing” these criteria into manageable categories scaled by order of priority toward delivering optimal service.
At KOVA, you’ll find the data analytics that are central to NENA’s best practices and that lead to the highest levels of service while streamlining operations and freeing up valuable resources. Contact us today and see why we’re the industry leader in digital service solutions.
