NICENEWS : Febuary 2006

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MONROE COUNTY 911 TAKES A QUANTUM LEAP TO NICE

When the Monroe County Emergency Communications Department (ECD) scrapped its contact center's old recording system for a new solution from NICE, it took a quantum leap forward. The center had been using bulky reel-to-reel tape recorders for years. "I think we were definitely on the tail end of the reel-to-reel," says John Merklinger, Director of Monroe County's ECD and a 19-year veteran of the Center.

Located in upstate New York on Lake Ontario, Monroe County has the largest population of all counties in the region. The Monroe County ECD is the central answering point for all of Monroe County, including the City of Rochester. The Center, operated by the City under contract with Monroe County, takes over 1.2 million calls per year, dispatching services for more than 76 different agencies. "We take all of the emergency calls for police, fire, and ambulance" notes Merklinger, "as well as non-emergency calls."

Improved access means better service
A noticeable added benefit of the new solution is the greater accessibility to captured calls - for everyone in the center who needs them. "Our old recorder wasn't on the network," relates Merklinger. "With our new NICE solution, you can basically sit down at any computer anywhere in this building and access the recordings. Anyone with the appropriate security can access the system," and he adds "it's so easy to use that our supervisors use it all the time." This in turn is resulting in better service to the citizens of the community.

Merklinger elaborates: "If a complaint comes in from a citizen at any time, even at one o'clock in the morning, the shift supervisor can use the NICE Scenario Replay solution, [which is part of the County's deployment] to find the call, listen to it, and provide an instantaneous answer right then and there." The solution even captures and stores the caller's ANI and ALI from the Center's CML phone system along with the voice recordings. "If somebody phones us and says 'I called 911 from xyz phone number,' even if they can't specify when they called, we can use the phone number to pull up the recording immediately," he says. "It saves a lot of time."

NICE Scenario Replay is helping to save time in other ways too. The Monroe County Emergency Communications Department employs 178 highly-trained telecommunicators and dispatchers, all of whom are EMD certified. As part of its ongoing EMD program, calls are routinely reviewed for quality assurance. The Center's quality program received national recognition recently when the Monroe County ECD was named a Center of Excellence by the NAEMD (National Academy of Emergency Medical Dispatch). The award recognizes the efforts of the ECD staff to provide the highest level of service possible to the community. The County's NICE solution is integral to that effort.

The Center's two quality coordinators routinely review three percent of all incoming calls for quality assurance, and every call involving a cardiac arrest, choking, childbirth, or other serious incident. The NICE solution has greatly facilitated this review process by making it easier for coordinators to access, score and share recorded calls.

It all begins with a CAD (computer aided design) printout that provides details on each call such as an EMD code, a time and date reference, and the ANI (the caller's phone number). "Once they have the CAD printout," says Merklinger, "they can retrieve the recording using the date and time, or by entering the phone number of the caller, and access it instantaneously." An added benefit - the coordinator can save the call as a .wav file, and then email the call and completed evaluation form to the shift supervisor. The supervisor can then together with the employee review the recording and evaluation on his or her PC.

Improving conviction rates and easing the workload
Each year, the Center receives over 4000 requests for copies of recordings for court or investigative purposes, from the district attorney and different agencies. A recent change in state law regarding domestic violence cases has created an upsurge in such requests. According to Merklinger, the recordings have increased the County's domestic violence conviction rate, but this has also increased the center's workload. Thankfully, it's a task made simpler with the NICE solution.

With so much added efficiency, the NICE solution provides another major benefit for Merklinger's staff. With the time saved on searching for recorded calls, his researchers have been freed up to work on less mundane and more strategic projects, such as long-range planning.

"So for us it was a huge jump forward, leaps and bounds," concludes Merklinger.

With so much added efficiency, the NICE solution provides another major benefit for Merklinger's staff. With the time saved on searching for recorded calls, his researchers have been freed up to work on less mundane and more strategic projects, such as long-range planning.