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| A UK Police Force Seeks Insight from Citizen Interactions |
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It is often said that the public sector is slow to follow the technological lead set by the commercial world. Bucking this trend is the one of the UK's leading police forces, Hampshire Constabulary. With a commitment to utilizing technology to drive efficiency and effectiveness in the service delivered to the citizens of Hampshire and the Isle of Wight, Hampshire Constabulary is taking an active role in changing this perception.
The cultural and technological demands of the police control room can rival that of any commercial contact center. Last year the Force Control Room, at Hampshire Constabulary's Southern Support Headquarters, dealt with 700,000 emergency calls. At the Hampshire Police Headquarters in Winchester the Force Enquiry Center manages more than 50,000 non-emergency calls each month and the general switchboard handles 1.5 million calls each year. In addition to inbound calls from the general public, Hampshire Constabulary has also launched the Crime Reporting Bureau (CRB) to enable officers to report crimes over their TETRA (Airwave) handsets whilst in active duty rather than returning to the station to write reports.
A NICE Solution for More Effective Report Creation & Retrieval
Inspector Roger Carter, responsible for the Call Management Support Unit of Hampshire Constabulary, explains, "The reports logged by the CRB are essential for use as evidence, for internal investigations and to provide support to other officers and citizens alike."
A dedicated CRB team is available 24 hours a day to enable Police Officers to dictate details of a crime over a secure VoIP network using a secure channel on their TETRA (Airwave) handsets.
Hampshire Constabulary needed to be confident that the right technology was in place. Insp. Carter explains, "We implemented an IP infrastructure as it was not physically possible to merge everyone onto a single site, yet it was vital that we operate as one unit."
"The NICE solution captures all calls whether they are from traditional telephone, mobile, TETRA (Airwave) talk groups, direct dial TETRA (Airwave) calls or VoIP. The solution offers the flexibility of deployment and integration with our ACD and other systems to ensure that we can find calls based on dispatcher position, call handler ID (Collar Number), location, caller number, incident etc."
Approximately 1200 requests for the retrieval of call records were received during 2004, which is growing exponentially year on year "The NICE solution enables us to implement a slick call search and retrieval procedure," comments Insp. Carter.
Insight from Interactions to Improve Situation Assessment
Hampshire Constabulary strives to provide better service to their public and to increase safety and security for the county, Insp. Carter comments, "As the initial point of contact the perception of the police force is directly linked with the service provided over the telephone." He adds, "NICE Systems is an integral part of our technology improvement plan, and looking ahead, the ability to spot predefined key words or detect the amount of emotion in a caller's voice, we will be able to more rapidly gather critical information and provide a higher quality of service to our citizens."
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| Company Snapshot |
"We want to bring the citizen's voice further into the call handling operations. Interaction analytics will deliver insight on how our agents and supervisors in the control rooms can better handle the vastly different types of calls received in the control room and respond with appropriate coaching, standardizing the highest level of citizen focused service across the entire force," added Insp. Carter.
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