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City of Yuma — Evaluating Emergency Calls

Public safety communications centers that record calls for compliance shouldn't overlook the usefulness of those recordings in evaluating dispatcher performance. That's a lesson learned from the call center industry, where recording and evaluation is widespread.

Harris County Mobile Command wins 2009 national call center award

The specialized unit was recognized for its excellence in providing and maintaining emergency communications during Hurricane Ike. Throughout the catastrophic hurricane the dedicated Sheriff's Office personnel assigned to the unit began what some characterized as a grueling odyssey in their efforts to meet the needs of the local emergency agencies hardest hit by the storm.

Minneapolis 911 wins 2008 national call center award

The 911 center used HigherGround's Capture-911 digital voice recording solution to record each of the incoming telephone calls as well as the radio transmissions. "We did not lose one single recording, even with the increased volume we experienced," said Tom Donohoe, Assistant Director of the Emergency Communications Center. "Selected recordings are now being used to recreate the incident in our presentations at APCO & NENA conferences."

North Suburban Emergency Communications Center

The North Suburban Emergency Communications Center is a consolidated PSAP serving police, fire and EMS departments in suburban Chicago. On an annual basis, a staff of 53 handles more than 215,000 incidents.

In early 2010, the NSECC purchased HigherGround's Capture911 recording system from authorized reseller Commercial Electronics Corp to replace a competing vendor's defective unit. Most dear to Sherrill Ornberg's heart was the additional purchase of HigherGround's Quality911 dispatcher evaluation solution. "To be perfectly honest, a recorder is a recorder is a recorder, as long as it works and is reliable. Pretty much all tier 1 equipment in the industry does the same thing. Where the HigherGround's product is so far advanced, in my opinion, is the QA component," says Ornberg.

Northwest Central Dispatch

Northwest Central Dispatch System (NWCDS) is one of the largest consolidated emergency dispatch systems in Illinois, serving many communities in the Chicago area including Arlington Heights, Buffalo Grove, Elk Grove Village, Hoffman Estates, Inverness, Mount Prospect, Palatine, Prospect Heights, Rolling Meadows, Schaumburg, and Streamwood. The combined population for their service area is more than 500,000 people.