Washington state’s Tri-Cities area deployed Aurelian AI technology in mid-January to handle non-emergency calls coming into its Southeast Communications Center, which serves most agencies in Benton and Franklin counties. And Laredo Police Department will implement a new 911 platform this year that will respond to non-emergency situations via automated prompts.
San Diego County’s call processing center, staffed by 911 dispatchers, handles up to 400,000 non-emergency calls a year. Those calls are now being answered and routed by what the county called a “voice AI agent.” Emergency calls continue to be answered by trained humans.
“This system doesn’t touch 911 at all,” Capt. Nathan Rowley, a spokesperson for the SDSO communications center, said. “But it’s more like, someone wanted to call to report their mailbox got broken into last night. Obviously, that’s important to the person, but it’s not up to necessarily 911, ‘I need to talk to somebody right now.’”
The new call answering and routing system, announced last week, uses technology from Hyper. It went live March 6, following a year of onboarding and testing. It takes the place of a previous workflow, which had non-emergency calls routed through the 911 dispatch center, where they were often subject to delays due to dispatchers handling more pressing 911 calls. The dispatch center handles some 1,800 to 2,400 calls a day, Rowley said.
It was not uncommon for non-emergency calls to sit on hold for five to 10 minutes "waiting to talk to somebody,” he said, indicating the new system will both reduce dispatchers’ workload and improve response times. It can prioritize calls depending upon their nature.
“If you had just called in because someone had broken into your car, you would be behind, potentially, 10 to 14 other callers, trying to find out who’s in jail, trying to find out how to get a concealed weapons permit, or someone trying to reach San Diego PD,” Rowley said. “Now, it will find out what you’re calling about, and potentially move you up in that queue.”
The Toronto Police Service (TPS) in Canada recently adopted the same technology, known there as the Toronto Non-Emergency Tool (TNET). Like the system used by San Diego County, TNET can be described as more of a “technological assistant rather than a person,” according to a Toronto Police Service press release.
“When people call our non-emergency line, they deserve quick access to the right help. TNET helps us do that while ensuring our Communications Operators can remain focused on 911 emergencies and complex situations where their expertise matters most,” Greg Watts, TPS superintendent for communication services, said.
Ultimately, it’s 911 dispatchers who really benefit from an automated call answering system, Rowley said, noting if the dispatcher is on a non-emergency call, and a 911 call comes in, the non-emergency call is placed on hold — and by not being on a non-emergency call, the dispatchers are more immediately available for the emergency calls.
“When someone calls 911, every second counts,” he said. “So if we’re able to get to those calls even three or four seconds quicker than we would have, that’s a net positive, and a win for the community.”
Across the country, 911 centers receive 240 million calls annually, with the same number of calls coming into 311 centers, Benjamin Sanders, Hyper CEO, said.
“There’s this bigger vision of, how do we make the interaction between residents and government incredible? And how do we make every interaction as good as a 911 call where you get an immediate answer?” he said. “You get immediate help. That would be ideal. This is really just the starting point of that bigger move.”
