Voice Recording and Quality Assurance

The right way to set up your QA evaluation forms for your 911 Call Center

The QA evaluation forms will be used to track the number of 911 telephone-based calls between the citizens and 911 call centers. The form should be completed by each caller within 7 calendar days of their last contact.

It is imperative that all standard operating procedures related to call handling and customer service are followed in order to ensure that we meet or exceed our goal of timely and accurate response rates.

To begin, you should:

Thoroughly explain the QA process to your staff members prior to implementing the program.

  1. This will ensure that they understand exactly what is expected of them and what is expected of the CSOs. A training session in the form of a two-hour in-depth QA session is strongly recommended and can be conducted by an outside vendor or can be enforced by your own staff members. It is recommended to use outside vendors to provide specific services such as designing the QA program, implementing it, and product evaluation using all NENA and APCO standards to begin.

Select Dispatches with Positive Results

  1. It is highly advantageous to start out selecting calls or dispatches that have positive results so that telecommunicators do not become fearful of the QA process. After the system is in place, there will be a transition period as call takers become accustomed to the new form. It is important to realize that not all calls will have the same results so it is imperative to set realistic goals and expectations.

Carefully Choose Evaluation Questions

  1. There are several types of evaluation forms available for your use. Consultants and telecommunication providers all provide standard forms that should be used as a starting point for your development of a form that answers all questions relevant to QA. Carefully decide which questions are applicable to your agency. Remove those that are definitely not applicable, modify questions to better fit your organization, and add new ones that are applicable.

Determine the desired point value for each question

4.  You may adjust the point value to anything management feels are appropriate, the more important the question, the larger the point value should be. Each category is scored separately based on the percentage of total points for that group. The totals for each category are added together to give the total number of points for the QA measurement. Rank the questions according to their relative importance to your agency. This will be used in developing evaluation forms for both call takers and CSOs. It is recommended that you assign a percentage value to each question based on importance. In order to standardize your measurements, normalize the values as follows: A perfectly done response is worth 100%, a partially correct response is worth 50%, and an incorrect response is worth 0%.

Determine if the question could be designated as “refused” or “NA”.

  1. Shade/highlight all the other questions in those columns where “refused” or “NA” would not be applicable. Note that most categories have no “refused” column.

Track Employees Scores

  1. Build an Excel spreadsheet with all of your employees’ names to track their scores. This will allow management to easily see the status of the employees’ progress or lack thereof. You should also contact your Recording System Vendor since most of the recording systems for 911 call centers have QA evaluations within the recording system. These can keep track of all your KPI’s and individual scores to make your life a whole lot easier.

Measure Performance & Behavior

  1. For telecommunicators who are exhibiting performance or behavior (i.e., poor customer service) issues, you may expand the spreadsheet to track particular questions. This will provide management with a tool to measure patterns of performance and/or behavior change (i.e., is now in compliance, needs more remediation, etc.) If your Recorder has QA, then you can then track exactly which questions they are failing and if it is a common KPI issue, you can then adjust your QA form scoring to change the behavior.

Track High Performing Staff Members

  1. Include a spot for those staff members who receive “Exceeds Standards”. While this will not have a numeric value, management can track how many times an employee obtained this accolade. and praise good work among your 911 call center.

Determine what an acceptable overall score is for your PSAP.

  1. Consider starting the program with a lower threshold score of (80%). Once your staff members have become accustomed to this level of review, consider raising the bar every two months by 2% to 5%. Continue to raise the bar until management believes it is at the appropriate level. A level of 90% is recommended.