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Public Safety Challenges: An Overview

Call handling challenges for PSAPs and communications, command, and control centers

Public Safety Answering Points, command & control centers, and emergency communications centers face a formidable set of performance challenges:

An almost overwhelming volume of requests and information. Call takers and dispatchers handle a constant influx of assistance requests and information. In just seconds, they must be able to determine the most important facts and initiate the optimum course of action.

Limited staff and budget. Public safety organizations seek to address growing workloads with limited budgets and staff. Here, workforce optimization is key, as these organizations strive to retain top performers and improve employee compliance with policies, service levels, and standards.

The serious impact of poor performance. In the public safety arena, employee errors and slow performance can have a profound and serious impact: loss of life or property, spiraling liability claims, and plummeting public opinion.

Rising public expectations. The general public increasingly demands the same high-level response, quality, and accountability from public safety agencies that they expect from commercial call centers — perhaps an even higher level of performance.

Additionally, Next Generation 911, the European Union’s E-112 mandate, and other public safety standards seek to improve the responsiveness of emergency services by leveraging advanced communications and location tracking technologies. However, these mandates can place serious cost and operational burdens on public safety agencies, which may already be grappling with the challenges of diminished funding, shrinking staffs, growing workloads, and rising expectations.

In short, today’s public safety agencies must be able to rapidly identify bottlenecks and call handling problems that delay response and reduce effectiveness. They must be able to reconstruct incidents quickly and efficiently and conduct faster, more productive investigations. They must be able to continuously measure and fine-tune the performance of call takers, supervisors, dispatchers, and other emergency communications personnel. And they must be able to comply with evolving public safety standards fully, seamlessly, and cost effectively.

For many years, commercial contact centers have relied on workforce optimization software to meet these challenges. Workforce optimization solutions have helped these contact centers achieve efficiencies and performance gains that can also be realized by emergency communications and command and control centers in the public sector. Read more about workforce optimization and public safety.