Isn't this a major opportunity for a centralized, scaled outsource provider to deliver 911 service to municipalities who sign up for it at a lower cost and better rate of service than would otherwise be possible?
Imagine an advanced call center with 500 employees. The center can afford sophisticated technology such as geographic point identification of the call, bucketing multiple calls about the same incident, maybe even things like voice stress detection. And because of the size and geographic diversity, spikes in certain areas could easily be handled because they would make little impact. Even time zone diversification would cut costs, because traffic incidents from commuter times would be more evenly distributed.
Not to mention training. There are always incidents where, despite the good service of the vast majority of 911 workers, there are gross mistakes made in some cases that can be traced back to poor training. A large facility can develop excellent processes, training and electronic infrastructure to reduce these sorts of problems.
You really don't want people in a large call center out in the middle of nowhere who are unaware of local landmarks and surroundings answering 9-1-1 calls. It's a huge public safety issue where you're dealing with distraught people and the operator has to make sense of various small bits of information quickly.
I would suggest having a backup to a large call center if the wait time is over 30 seconds. The remote call center could have priority to "escalate" to the local call center and share information. Integrating it so the local call center could see what the remote site had typed and replay the message if the caller stops responding would also improve that system.
Set things up as a distributed system so each site would accept incoming calls if they had excess capacity and give remote sites access to local conditions. So you can handle large sudden spikes without excessive staff.
The other option would be to try automatically handle some calls using location information while the caller is waiting. (If you are calling about the car crash at _ we are sending an ambulance. If you need further assistance please stay on the line.)
There was a case in Sydney, Australia recently which highlighted this. A school boy was lost in bushland and called 000 (Australian 911)and they asked that he give them a street address to which they could send an ambulance. As he was in the middle of the bush, there was no streets or signs etc. Local knowledge may not have saved him, but it would have made locating him significantly easier rather than just reading from a script and asking for a street name.
Source: http://www.theaustralian.news.com.au/story/0,25197,25373564-...
I don't really want to deal with someone in Delhi when they can't understand that my no-fee bank account isn't supposed to be charged fees. Hence no-fee. Yet when they finally understand, they tell me 'oh, we can't deal with that, you'll have to go into your local branch'.
I really don't want to call 9-1-1 and be told 'oh, we can't deal with that, you'll have to go into your local branch' when I say my grandma is having a stroke.
It's already done in countries with a modern advanced infrastructure - if the local system is busy you get route to progressively larger centres until a free slot is found - all automaticaly and in a few seconds.
"Dear Sir, this Paul from Emergency Center. Your call be very important to us, glad you took the time to contact. Please how may I turn this into win-win situation for both?"
"I'm bleeding arrr horrible accident arrr"
"Dear Sir, thank you for detail. Looking for best local service, one moment please, sir (...music...) Thank you for your patience, sir. Your request is important to us and will forward to local (reading) veee-teeerinaaa-ry asap.
Sir, while you wait would you like to hear about other interesting products?"
"Aaarrh leg... armm... detached... arrrh"
"Dear Sir, glad you are taking the time. I will now forward call to Susan who will have many information about interesting product. Thank very much for calling 911-Advantage Sir."
"Uarghhh fire... children... uuuuah"
chrrrp "Good evening Sir, this is Susan from 911-Advantage. Glad you are interested in our products. Sir, may I ask if you have insurance?"
"Muuuh, cows... trampling... fire.. blaargh"
"That is so great to hear, Sir. Did you hear about our brand new Dental-Deluxe package for singles?"
The approach being used more recently by at least one software provider I know about is to link all of the call centers in a geographic region together. Extra calls in one municipality get sent to another where people can handle it.
Outsourcing is a bad idea, because "we're at the walmart by the high school" is significantly easier for locals to understand than it would be for someone in "an advanced call center". I know that, ideally, the technology would be good enough that the person doesn't have to say where they are, but that isn't the reality at the moment
Indeed, I witnessed a car accident a few days ago, and called 911. Sure enough, I got a busy signal.
My first thought is that you should be put on hold rather than given a busy signal, but I wonder if the busy signal helps filter out some of the non-emergency calls.
I recently had to call 911 when I witnessed a highway accident happen. I must've called within 30 seconds, and the operator (I got through without any wait or busy signal) told me they already had several reports of that accident -- within 30 seconds! I was impressed.
I think the simplest way to fix this particular problem would be to just direct to a "recording buffer"--like voicemail, but an operator can come in at any time when there's one available. There will have to be voice recognition so they have a screen of what you've said so far; if they had to actually listen to the buffer, they couldn't listen to you. However, if the line has since gone dead, or you're just babbling incoherently or something similar, they should be able to listen to the start of the buffer (while still having you on in the other ear.)
On reflection, though, this probably isn't possible; if voice recognition could understand these people to any degree, there would already be priority-triggers based on certain keywords (fire, seizure, etc.) and I'm sure these haven't yet popped up. What could work is if you had a pair of operators for each caller--one who comes in on the call-in-progress, and the other who listens to the buffer and tells the first (or types into a shared display) any additional information they need to know. The buffer operator could then go on to another call, though perhaps having two available operators for each call might help reduce mistakes. :)
I'm in Boston, near Copley Square. Go into the Citizen's Bank ATM which is inside a glass alcove with a security door that you need to swip your ATM card to get into. While I'm getting money, a crazy, twitching homeless guy starts banging on the door. His eyes have something wrong with them, he's shaking and twitching, looks out of his mind.
I look round for another way out, there isn't, I've got to go through the door. So I open it, and go to step out. He goes to block my way and grab my arm, and says loudly, "Gimmie a dollar! Gimmie a dollar!!!"
I shake him off me, and get away from there.
Now, I'm a pretty big, strong guy. Not exactly an easy mark - and this guy had no qualms about it. I figure he must've, absolutely must've been on some kind of stimulants.
So I call 911 on my cell phone. Explain what happened, detailed the look in his eyes and that I think he might on some kind of drugs, and that I'm worried if a smaller person or older person went into there and the guy did his crazy act. I was calm about it, and tried to impart the sense of urgency I was getting at the same time. The 911 lady transfers me to someone else, and I tell the story again. This person tells me I'm talking to the wrong department and gives me another number. I hang up and call that police precinct. A guy answers, I explain the story, and the call is disconnected - and not on my end, I always had perfect reception around Copley.
I call back and and they tell me, once again, I'm talking to the wrong place, say they'll transfer me, and the call drops again. And again, not on this end.
A bit annoyed and disheartened at this point, I called my Mom who I was going to have dinner with that night, and said, yes, I'll be at dinner, by the way, there was this crazy guy and the police don't seem to care, even though I'm pretty sure something bad could happen to someone. Best case, some people are getting scared/intimidated. Worst case? Who knows. The guy was out of his frigging mind. And again, I'm a pretty big, strong looking guy.
My Mom says forget it, you tried. That didn't sit well with me, but I let it go and hopped on the Green line to head to dinner. That still doesn't sit with me to this day - what if something had happened? What the hell else could I have done? Go look for an uniformed officer nearby and tell him personally? (I took a quick look, didn't see anyone). Go confront the guy myself? (Seems like a bad idea) That whole event just sat poorly with me - my intuition tells me, "this is a bad situation and needs to be dealt with", I try going through the authorities, and get a lot of run-around, transfers, and disconnected twice. I still don't feel good about that to this day - and I'm left wondering if I could have handled that differently and what the hell all the people I spoke to were thinking.
"Dear mugger/murderer/rapist, would thee please be so kind to delay your desired actions by a mere 20 minutes, while I try to communicate with 911? Certainly, you would agree that it is not a gentlemans way to abuse this misbehaviour of the emergency call. May I offer you a cup of tea while we wait for the call to go through?"
In all seriousness, if there is an emergency hotline and you need around 5 - 10 minutes to get the call actually through there, that is just not acceptable in several situations. and I am not even talking about 20 minutes or half an hour. Half an hour is an eternity with regard to emergencies.
Imagine an advanced call center with 500 employees. The center can afford sophisticated technology such as geographic point identification of the call, bucketing multiple calls about the same incident, maybe even things like voice stress detection. And because of the size and geographic diversity, spikes in certain areas could easily be handled because they would make little impact. Even time zone diversification would cut costs, because traffic incidents from commuter times would be more evenly distributed.
Not to mention training. There are always incidents where, despite the good service of the vast majority of 911 workers, there are gross mistakes made in some cases that can be traced back to poor training. A large facility can develop excellent processes, training and electronic infrastructure to reduce these sorts of problems.
Or is this already done?