The San Francisco Department of Emergency Management (SFDEM), a NICE customer since 2006, has once again selected NICE solutions for its 9-1-1 center upgrade.
The SFDEM 9-1-1 center will be taking advantage of the full range of NICE Inform’s future-ready applications and integrations to improve productivity and effectiveness across its entire operation, and ensure the highest levels of service for residents of the City and County of San Francisco, and large numbers of tourists who visit the area as well.
“We’ve been working with NICE for about 10 years now and it has been a really good relationship,” said Mitch Sutton, CIO, San Francisco Department of Emergency Management.
“We feel that NICE really ‘gets’ public safety and our requirements. In addition to meeting our needs today, the NICE Inform suite of solutions is well suited to our future requirements.”
The SFDEM is aggressively recruiting telecommunicators to keep pace with the workload, while also looking for other ways to bolster telcommunicator efficiency and effectiveness.
The SFDEM’s 9-1-1 call takers and dispatchers are a critical lifeline between the public and first responders.
With 3,474 calls to the 9-1-1 center daily, the SFDEM 9-1-1 center will use the full range of NICE Inform’s future-ready applications and integrations to improve productivity and effectiveness across its entire operation and ensure the highest levels of service.
Boosting Efficiency and Quality Assurance
“Our telecommunicators perform difficult and life-saving work every day,” said Sutton.
“Here at the SFDEM there has been a big push to process calls more efficiently to get first responders on scene faster.
We’re also placing a heightened emphasis on quality assurance to ensure our telecommunicators are handling calls efficiently and according to protocols. NICE Inform is going to help us streamline our quality assurance process and meet our goals.”
With NICE Inform Evaluator, the SFDEM will be able to expand its quality assurance program to systematically review all call types and identify areas where call processing can be improved.
NICE Inform Evaluator combines automated, rules-based QA call selection with a form builder for creating customized evaluation forms for call review and scoring.
Results of evaluations are automatically tabulated and can be used to pinpoint coaching and training gaps, while also improving feedback and employee retention.
With the addition of NICE screen recording, supervisors will be able to hear what was said and at the same time see what was happening on the telecommunicator’s screen as calls were processed.
A complete chronological, visual and audible history of an incident, simplifying investigations
The SFDEM also expects to achieve efficiency gains in its records custodians unit. This unit processes close to 25,000 requests for 9-1-1 records annually for District Attorneys and other requestors.
NICE Inform will streamline the fulfillment of these requests by making it easier to find, retrieve and share audio recordings.
Introducing Next Generation Technologies
Like most 9-1-1 centers, the SFDEM is moving to next generation technologies.
NICE’s direct, certified integration with West Corporation’s VIPER® Voice over IP solution means that the SFDEM can record its IP emergency communications with confidence.
(Unified communications is about bridging the gaps between people; your teams, your clients, your suppliers and your partners. It’s about ending confusion, obsolescence and complexity for everyone. Courtesy of West Corporation and YouTube)
NICE Inform is also future-ready, so when the SFDEM is ready to start accepting SMS 9-1-1 texts, it will be able to leverage its investment in NICE Inform to record and manage voice, SMS 9-1-1 texts, and additional future multimedia in a unified system.
“NICE values our long-standing relationship with the San Francisco Department of Emergency Management, and we’re honored that they continue to entrust NICE with their public safety needs,” said Chris Wooten, Executive Vice President, NICE.
“NICE is committed to helping the SFDEM improve its efficiency and effectiveness to provide excellent emergency response to the citizens it serves, while also helping the SFDEM prepare for the future.”
The San Francisco Department of Emergency Management
The San Francisco Department of Emergency Management (DEM) leads the City in planning, preparedness, communication, response, and recovery for daily emergencies, large scale citywide events, and major disasters.
DEM is the vital link in emergency communication between the public and first responders, and provides key coordination and leadership to City departments, stakeholders, residents, and visitors.
The San Francisco Division of Emergency Communications’ 9-1-1 center serves a city and county of 860,000 people and fields calls for police, fire and medical emergencies, as well as calls for nonemergency services. The center receives more than 1.2 million emergency and non-emergency calls per year.
