9-1-1 Should Never Give Me A Busy Signal
techcrunch.com
9-1-1 Should Never Give Me A Busy Signal
1–10 of 26 posts
Re: 9-1-1 Should Never Give Me A Busy Signal
#2Indeed, I witnessed a car accident a few days ago, and called 911. Sure enough, I got a busy signal.
My first thought is that you should be put on hold rather than given a busy signal, but I wonder if the busy signal helps filter out some of the non-emergency calls.
Re: 9-1-1 Should Never Give Me A Busy Signal
#3Indeed, I witnessed a car accident a few days ago, and called 911. Sure enough, I got a busy signal. My first thought is that you should be put on hold rather than given a busy signal, but I wonder if the busy signal helps filter out some of the non-emergency calls.
Bringing up the non-emergency calls is a really good point. Abuse/misuse of 911 is a huge and serious problem:
Re: 9-1-1 Should Never Give Me A Busy Signal
#4Isn't this a major opportunity for a centralized, scaled outsource provider to deliver 911 service to municipalities who sign up for it at a lower cost and better rate of service than would otherwise be possible?
Imagine an advanced call center with 500 employees. The center can afford sophisticated technology such as geographic point identification of the call, bucketing multiple calls about the same incident, maybe even things like voice stress detection. And because of the size and geographic diversity, spikes in certain areas could easily be handled because they would make little impact. Even time zone diversification would cut costs, because traffic incidents from commuter times would be more evenly distributed.
Not to mention training. There are always incidents where, despite the good service of the vast majority of 911 workers, there are gross mistakes made in some cases that can be traced back to poor training. A large facility can develop excellent processes, training and electronic infrastructure to reduce these sorts of problems.
Or is this already done?
Re: 9-1-1 Should Never Give Me A Busy Signal
#5Isn't this a major opportunity for a centralized, scaled outsource provider to deliver 911 service to municipalities who sign up for it at a lower cost and better rate of service than would otherwise be possible? Imagine an advanced call center with 500 employees. The center can afford sophisticated technology such as geographic point identification of the call, bucketing multiple calls about the same incident, maybe…
You really don't want people in a large call center out in the middle of nowhere who are unaware of local landmarks and surroundings answering 9-1-1 calls. It's a huge public safety issue where you're dealing with distraught people and the operator has to make sense of various small bits of information quickly.
Re: 9-1-1 Should Never Give Me A Busy Signal
#6Yeah, dial "zero", then say "operator, connect me to the police department."
You have people dying and you can't go to plan b?
Re: 9-1-1 Should Never Give Me A Busy Signal
#7I recently had to call 911 when I witnessed a highway accident happen. I must've called within 30 seconds, and the operator (I got through without any wait or busy signal) told me they already had several reports of that accident -- within 30 seconds! I was impressed.
I guess it varies by locale.
Re: 9-1-1 Should Never Give Me A Busy Signal
#8Isn't this a major opportunity for a centralized, scaled outsource provider to deliver 911 service to municipalities who sign up for it at a lower cost and better rate of service than would otherwise be possible? Imagine an advanced call center with 500 employees. The center can afford sophisticated technology such as geographic point identification of the call, bucketing multiple calls about the same incident, maybe…
It's already done in countries with a modern advanced infrastructure - if the local system is busy you get route to progressively larger centres until a free slot is found - all automaticaly and in a few seconds.
Re: 9-1-1 Should Never Give Me A Busy Signal
#9I called 911 to report an OD on the sidewalk last week and was on hold for 4 minutes. :/
Re: 9-1-1 Should Never Give Me A Busy Signal
#10I called 911 to report an OD on the sidewalk last week and was on hold for 4 minutes. :/
OD = old drunk?