Why WFM Technology Employed by Traditional Contact Centres is Now Making Inroads in Police Control Rooms
Police control rooms have never been busier or more complex. In fact, if you manage a police control room you’re likely encountering constant challenges related to new contact channels, resource issues (doing more with less), growing demands, cost cutting, staff and skill shortages, and ever-increasing public expectations.
It comes as no surprise that a large number of police forces are launching recruitment drives and training initiatives to address these challenges. While the obvious goal is to increase headcount, force control rooms are also looking to attract a broader demographic, as they juggle growing demand that’s exerting pressure on their limited resources.
But, optimising control room staffing isn’t simply about hiring more people to do the job. As a control room manager, you need to be able to identify peaks and troughs in demand, and call patterns, to ensure your control room is appropriately staffed. And that’s precisely why the Workforce Management (WFM) technology that has been long proven in commercial contact centres is now enjoying growing popularity in police control rooms as well.
Do More with Less with WFM
Workforce Management is a powerful tool that can help control rooms plan, monitor and manage operator staffing to match demand. In the simplest terms, it provides for a set of processes that enable control rooms to achieve and maintain operational efficiency, by ensuring that the right number of operators with the right skill sets are on shift at the right time. This is not to be confused with Duty Management systems which only focus on force-wide rostering and other rudimentary functions.
Understand Future Staffing Needs
The two core components of a WFM system are forecasting and scheduling. To accurately forecast expected demand the system needs to not only be able predict precise call volumes, but also understand the types of calls that operators will be expected to handle during each shift. This ability to accurately forecast demand is the foundation on which scheduling is built.
Currently, most police force control rooms rely upon their experience to make these types of projections. For example, it is a sad reality that cases of domestic violence tend to rise during the Christmas period. Therefore, it makes sense during these time periods to roster operators with more experience and/or specialist skills in handling these types of calls.
But while predictions such as these may be intuitive, human intuition isn’t infallible. That’s why the latest WFM technologies incorporate artificial intelligence (AI) to discern accurate insights into the factors that drive call demand. For example, NICE’s WFM solution features powerful learning models that can unearth hidden patterns in historical data, using more than forty forecasting models, including Box-Jenkins ARIMA, Exponential Smoothing, Multilinear Seasonal Regression and Best Pick.
Of course, optimised scheduling goes hand in glove with accurate forecasting. Once expected demand can be accurately forecasted, the WFM system can then develop a schedule that aligns with the anticipated demand, taking into consideration a wide range of other factors, such as Automatic Call Distributor routing rules, and available operator skill sets (that are important for handling the anticipated call volumes and types). All of this information is used to determine the best possible scheduling coverage, and to ensure the control room is not overtaken by sudden demand spikes. Of course, no WFM system can accurately plan for the unpredictable - a major emergency incident.
Beyond its predictive capabilities, NICE’s WFM solution can also track the effectiveness of its own predictions and scheduling performance. Using real-time data from an ACD or telephony system, for example, it can measure daily performance, by comparing forecasted activity to actual call volumes.
Make Your Control Room a Place People Want to Work
The fact is – working in a control room is a rewarding yet demanding job. The stress of the profession, combined with the unsociable hours, can make hiring a challenge. This is why forces are increasingly looking to recruit from a wider cross-section of the communities they serve, from young people to individuals with more life experience, from those looking for part-time and flexible hours to those seeking a total career change.
But ironically, these recruiting aspirations often don’t match up with the work/life balance and flexible working expectations of potential employees. This is another area where WFM can lend a hand, by providing a platform that empowers operators to manage their own schedules, for example, by submitting requests for leave, shift swaps and other desired changes.
Why Choose NICE WFM?
NICE, with the support of our partner SVL, has been providing workforce management solutions to UK public safety control rooms for over 10 years. Furthermore, NICE has been recognised as a market share leader in WFM by DMG Consulting for nine consecutive years. More than two thousand commercial contact centres and police control rooms, with over 2.7 million employees, are now benefitting from our industry-leading WFM forecasting and scheduling capabilities.
