Case Study: Astoria Call Center

Small City First to Adopt Public Communications Technology

Astoria Regional Dispatch Center, a division of the Astoria Police Department, is involved in emergency response countywide, answering 911 and dispatching emergency response for three-fourths of Clatsop County. The Center relies on advanced technology to efficiently serve 15 agencies and over 25,000 people.

Overview

Customer Profile
Astoria, OR, city of 10,000 residents maintains the small city character while leveraging technology to enhance lifestyle.

Business Situation
Regional Dispatch Center is involved in emergency response countrywide, answering 911 and dispatching emergency response for three-fourths of Clatsop County, OR. While telephone technology has advanced, the agency was still missing an outward facing website for effective communication.

Solution
Astoria Regional Dispatch Center launched a dedicated Virtual Communication Center on the web via PIER.

Key Benefits

• Easily accessible website
• Quick posting of current, vital information
• Timely responses to community questions
• Successful adoption by agency employees and community members

PIER Customer Profile

Astoria, Oregon is located near the mouth of the Columbia River, a few miles from the Pacific Ocean. This city of 10,000 residents holds the distinction of being the oldest American settlement west of the Rockies. With its hillsides of stately Victorian homes overlooking the mouth of the Columbia River, this oldest of western settlements is known for keeping its character in an era when smaller cities are being drained of local color. While Astoria's core remains uninfected by the monotony of progress, residents are also quick to adapt technology that enhances their lifestyle.

Business Situation

Astoria Regional Dispatch Center, a division of the Astoria Police Department, is involved in emergency response countywide, answering 911 and dispatching emergency response for three-fourths of Clatsop County. The Center relies on advanced technology to efficiently serve 15 agencies and over 25,000 people.

Technology has infiltrated the Astoria Regional Dispatch Center over the past decade, according to Dick Lang, Emergency Communications Manager for the City of Astoria. Equipment available for the call center’s dispatchers has advanced from a single terminal configured to receive state and national crime databases (virtually by teletype) to a modern multi-computer environment. Dispatchers are linked to sophisticated state and national databases, themselves vastly more comprehensive than a decade ago. Emergency 911 call technology has advanced from basic call routing to enhanced 911, providing far more information to dispatchers. This new technology has increased effectiveness and efficiency of dispatchers.

One technology still missing was an outward-facing website to provide effective communication with stakeholders. Like other call centers, they were still relying on telephone calls, radio station announcements, newspaper articles, faxes and paper reports to distribute information. In our vernacular, “posting” a document meant placing it on the front counter of the police station.

The Communications System

In August of 2003, the Astoria Regional Dispatch Center launched a dedicated Virtual Communication Center on the web using PIER (Public Information and Emergency Response). “Regional call centers all need a website for posting general public information,” Dick says. “There’s a lot of general information which can be helpful and valuable to a community, such as, what the call center does and how to effectively use 911 services.” PIER provided the call center with the technology to distribute this information. PIER functionality allows Astoria
Regional Dispatch Center staff to create and post police logs, storm warnings, weather updates and any other needed information without depending on a webmaster. Dispatchers can copy, create and post information, at any time of the day and without any formal programming knowledge.

Call center dispatchers must continually balance multiple tasks. Their “normal” duties are answering 911 calls, dispatching appropriate responders, providing critical information to the responders and maintaining a calming presence with callers. On top of this, dispatchers must answer business phone lines and field non-911 calls, and provide general information to all who need to receive it. “The more effectively dispatchers can complete important non-critical communication tasks, the sooner they can return to answering 911 calls,” Lang reports, “and PIER gives us the tools to do just that.”

The challenge with adopting any new technology is how soon will people adapt to the new way of doing their jobs? Dick reports that PIER has fulfilled his expectations. PIER’s templates and mailing lists make it easy for new users to begin using the system, even under the daily stress of staffing a call center. “A Police Sergeant has other things to do, like arresting criminals”, Lang states, “and PIER makes it easier and faster to provide pertinent public information in a timely matter.”

Lang sees higher priorities that can be met by PIER’s unique and powerful feature set. He is excited about PIER’s capability of integrating web site population with “push” technology, the capability of emailing, faxing or telephoning messages to stakeholders. “We need a “push” technology that will let us send information to the public, the media, and response agencies. Now we can push vital information to all the people who need it, instantly!”

Additional Information

View the Astoria Regional Dispatch Center’s PIER site at www.astoriadispatch.org.