When Contact Centers Fail

A terrible customer service experience with POTS leads our correspondent to ask – how can contact centers rise to meet the failures of the businesses they support? Right up front, let me say that I understand why contact centers exist. But I dislike them intensely. In fact, to me, contact centers, although often providing an acceptable level of service at a higher level of efficiency than traditional customer service, occasionally fail. And when they do, they fail miserably. I am living with the learned experience of what happens when high-touch customer service is replaced by systems meant to optimize profits while minimizing customer experience. I thought I knew, as a seasoned industry professional, how to resolve these problems. Clearly, I was wrong.

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Hybrid Workforce Technology Is Not Immune from e911 Regulations

Here's why any communications technology professional should attend the Enterprise Connect 2023 panel "Managing e911 for the Hybrid Workforce"
The world of 911 calls, the underlying infrastructure that makes them possible, and the regulations that place new requirements on that infrastructure can all be daunting to those who aren’t already immersed in these issues. But the Enterprise Connect 2023 panel "Managing e911 for the Hybrid Workforce" is an informative and entertaining introduction that will boost your understanding of the technological and legal issues hybrid that workplaces must master, and give you a roadmap for action. And if history is any indication, the speakers will be so passionate and animated that they’ll start the kind of conversation that spills out onto the show floors and post-panel parties.

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The Funding Needed to Upgrade Our Public Safety Infrastructure Just Went Away

If federal funding for technology infrastructure to support the transition form E911 to NG 911 isn’t restored quickly, the underlying technology is on life support. It's not always easy to understand the underlying technology that makes calls to 911 work, and it's not always important to understand that technology, just so long as it works when you need it. But what is easy to understand—and important to know--is that if federal funding for technology infrastructure to support the transition from E911 to Next Generation 911 (NG 911) isn't made available quickly, the underlying technology, and the reliability and accuracy of caller location information that that technology enables, is itself on life support.

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911 Is Getting a Lot Smarter. Here Are Several Things You Need to Know

For one thing, there's no such thing as a national 911 center

E911 as we know it will slowly fade into the sunset, and as Next Generation 911 becomes the standard, the key technology has evolved as well, with aging ANI/ALI (Automatic Number Identification/Automatic Location Information) databases replaced by underlying Presence Information Data Format Location Object (PDIF-LO)-driven formats used to deliver accurate location information when a call to 911 is made.

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988: Providing a Lifeline to Those in Need

While an entity's responsibility to support access to 988 doesn’t have the same legal obligations as 911, it’s a step in the right direction to providing those in mental distress with help and resources.

For those in the middle of a mental health crisis, finding the right support and resources quickly can not only help address the underlying cause of the distress, but it can quite literally be lifesaving. And with the three-digit (988) Suicide and Crisis Lifeline, which launched nationwide this July, it is expected that people in need of assistance will have simpler access to a trained mental health professional who can help during challenging circumstances.

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