Developing Skilled Teams for Scalable Center Expansion

Overview & Challenges

Gareth Williams has dedicated his career to advancing emergency communications. Starting as a paramedic dispatcher, he ran a hospital-based Fire and EMS dispatch center for 30 years, was a certified Paramedic for 36 years and is a past NJ NENA President. In 2012 he transitioned into the public sector, joining the Union County, NJ Regional Communications Center. At that time the center operations were limited, serving the county police and a single municipality.

Today, the center serves 33 agencies across Union County, handling 350,000 calls annually. Gareth is now the Chief Public Safety Telecommunicator and also serves as the County 911 Coordinator. This growth was driven by cost-saving consolidation efforts and sustained by the consistent performance of a dedicated team that has earned the trust of the communities they serve.

To maintain this level of operational excellence and accommodate future growth, the ECC felt that it needed abetter QA solution. Previously, trainers conducted call evaluations manually in their spare time, a tedious and inefficient process that evaluated only about 1% of calls. This method was prone to bias and inconsistency.

QA was a burden to our training staff and wasn’t providing a complete, unbiased picture of call compliance and quality.

- Gareth Williams,
UnionCounty, NJ ECC

SOLUTION

Union County selected CommsCoach to streamline their call and dispatch evaluations. After a quick three-week implementation, and a refined focus on eligible calls and core evaluation criteria, they were able to evaluate virtually 100% of calls.

Now, ECC supervisors use the weekly goals identified by CommsCoach. Each week, they announce a focused area for improvement, discuss how it should beproperly executed and then measure for improvement in their compliance levels.

Key Takeaways

Bias Elimination

With 100% evaluations, they have the data to provide accurate insights into a telecommunicators complete performance, eliminating the potential for bias and favoritism.

Objective Performance Baseline

Supervisors now have a very accurate record of compliance and performance for each telecommunicator over time.It makes career-related decisions objective.

Powerful, Actionable Data

Underlying all of these operational improvements and excellence is data. CommsCoach gives compelling data that reveals the core operational ECC data that helps centers on a path of continual improvement.

I was impressed byCommsCoach’s AI capabilities. It is able to identify compliance, even with the natural variations in conversations, saving significant time. It also immediately flags stressful calls so we can do timely wellness checks with our team.

- Gareth Williams
UnionCounty, NJ ECC

RESULTS

Evaluations

• Improved calls evaluated from 1% to 100%
• Notable improvement in compliance metrics within six months due to targeted training on CommsCoach
• Triggers for high compliance calls for positive feedback, non-compliant calls for constructive correction

Data

Union County continues to expand its operations to county agencies over time. With CommsCoach they have a level of data on call evaluations and overall center operational performance that other centers do not have.As agencies approach them for consolidation projects,competing centers can’t match Union County’s visibility and real-time data insights, giving them a clear edge in winning new projects.

The CommsCoach data has been very eye-opening into many aspects of our operations. We now have a complete picture of how our center is performing, and how to continually improve.

— Gareth Williams
‍Union County, NJ ECC

100% Eligible Calls and Radio Dispatch Events Evaluated