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Interaction analytics
Recording the interaction between the public and the emergency services is not a new concept by any means. But there are still quite a few things that the emergency services could learn from the private sector, not least of which is interaction analysis technology.
Where the private sector goes the public sector follows and so it is no surprise that technology used by “contact centres” (“call centres” are yesterday’s term) to improve the efficiency and effectiveness of caller interaction is now being seriously considered by various emergency services.
Jamie Wilson, Marketing Manager (Public Safety) at NICE Systems, says there are two reasons for this. Firstly, to improve interaction quality, and secondly to analyse the areas where a call handler may require some coaching.
NICE has had such a solution on the commercial market for a number of years now, called NICE Perform, and it is used successfully by globally recognised brands such as Federal Express in the US.
Readers will be familiar with the phrase, “your call may be recorded for quality purposes” when calling a service provider, and it is reasonable that contact centres listen to a sample of such calls. However, the large contact centres require a more organised approach, he says, if only because the volumes of calls can be huge. “We advocate total recording of all calls. There is a well-known issue where if you selectively record, you get a number of good calls, bad calls and average calls. If you randomly collect calls you statistically get average calls, so you don’t get a good picture. So what we say today is that you should record everything and use interaction analytics (IA) technology.”
With IA it is possible to tag calls according to specific requirements. In the commercial world, it may be when a competitor’s name is mentioned, or if someone says they don’t agree with a price. “In the public sector it could be the word ‘crash’, or ‘burglary’. You can also spot heightened levels of emotion. It is even possible to link calls with what an operator is doing. Lingering on a particular screen may mean they need some coaching.”
Behavioural parameters can be set for tagging too, “Here in the UK we typically take it in turns to speak, but in stressful situations those parameters are broken.”
The tags allow supervisors to build a picture on all interactions relating to their staff, allowing them to correct weak areas. “Agent number one, for example, may have 20 per cent of calls in the ‘excellent’ category, 60 per cent in ‘acceptable’, and 10 per cent in ‘bad’. The manager can then recommend some coaching or training, an important part of performance management.”
But as far as Wilson is concerned, the exciting part of NICE Perform – at least in the context of the emergency services – is being able to focus on and acting on what the caller is saying. Being able to focus on calls where certain key words are mentioned – for example “bomb”, or a certain area in the city – could have huge advantages, believes Wilson. “A lot of the police forces already have the performance management solution in place. They are capturing the information and evaluating it. But we are offering the next level.”
