Sno911 | Automation in High Call Volume Episodes

Long before Aurelian (as we know it) existed, I was trying to learn more about 9-1-1 and cold-outreached to Derek Wilson, an operations manager at Sno911. They are the unified dispatch center for Snohomish County, WA and serves nearly a million citizens and approximately 40 user agencies. They answer just about 850,000 calls every year.

Derek had a few interesting points: 1) many admin calls create calls for service 2) admin call volume increased 90% over five years and 3) automating these calls wasn’t yet possible. 

Fast forward almost exactly a year later and we’re gearing up to go-live with Sno911.

The bomb cyclone

The day of our scheduled go-live, all of the Pacific Northwest braced for a “bomb cyclone” – a once in a decade level storm bringing 100+ mph gusts. This would knock out power for over 600,000 people across Washington and ~200,000 in Snohomish County alone. My gut reaction was to delay the go-live – it felt like a bad omen – but the Sno911 team insisted we proceed. This was why they bought Aurelian in the first place.

“Everybody has a plan until they get punched in the mouth” – Mike Tyson

In moments like these we often see Emergency Communications Centers get the same volume of 9-1-1 calls typical for an entire day, within an hour. In preparation for the cyclone, we switched Sno911 into “storm mode” expanding the types of calls we take and reassessing the priority of some calls. In less than 30 minutes, we were able to recalibrate Aurelian to better fit the evolved needs of the center and keep telecommunicators focused on the highest acuity calls.

Historically, Sno911 implemented a call tree for situations like this: “press 1 for power outage related inquiries…” and so on and so forth. It was roughly 90 seconds long and forced the caller to self-diagnose where they should be going and, for any of the non-listed issues, had the caller wait in the non-emergent queue, often for 30+ minutes.

With Aurelian, every call was answered immediately. From there, the AI agent routed the caller to appropriate external resources, triaged and forwarded high acuity calls to telecommunicators, and collected information to create calls for service. This ensured callers waiting to report non-emergencies could safely wait in queue.

In the first 48 hours, Aurelian answered 2,500 calls which was 2.5x the norm:

1. Roughly 400 callers were rerouted to utility-related services by texting callers with the website to check the power outage map or forwarding them to the utilities district
2. 149 calls were triaged as emergent and sent to Sno911’s emergency queue
3. Nearly 1,000 calls created calls for service: downed power lines, trees blocking traffic, etc.

“For me, the biggest win was Aurelian’s ability to understand the context of the situation and assess properly. We had a caller dial into the admin line with something that seemed like a normal power outage, but Aurelian realized the power outage was a secondary issue – in reality it was a woman reporting that the power outage stranded her husband in his motorized lift. It then shunted her to the emergency queue, probably saving that caller over an hour.” – Derek Wilson, Operations Manager

Aftermath

Sno911’s main goal with Aurelian was to improve the experience of its callers. At peak times, wait time on the admin line often exceeded 20+ minutes and with admin call volume growing 90% in five-years, something had to change.

Now, every call is answered instantly… and that matters. For Sno911, roughly 8% of the calls received on our non-emergency line turn out to be high acuity/emergent situations, and the AI agent transfers them to Sno911’s emergency queue.

In the last four months, Aurelian has taken over 50,000 calls and automated roughly 60% of them, all while maintaining that great quality of service Sno911 is known for. We’re very excited for what’s to come.

“I was very impressed by the ability of the automated AI agent to capture the required information and summarize it. Awesome job leveraging tech to streamline your processes! Coming from someone who works in Big Tech :)” – Anonymous Caller

A side note – the team at Sno911 has been exceptionally helpful in pushing our product further. They’ve provided wonderful constructive feedback that has shaped many of our staple features: location validation and online reporting qualification/referral to name a few. It’s rare to find a team that actively goes above and beyond to improve the tools they use for themselves and everyone else. We're very grateful to their whole team and a sincere thank you to:

• Operations Manager Derek Wilson for leading the implementation end to end and having an unbelievable sense of urgency in everything he does.
• Director Kurt Mills for taking a chance on a small company tackling a difficult problem and treating our relationship as a true partnership. Director Mills fosters a culture of innovation, supporting non-traditional strategies when they serve to advance community service excellence.
• 9-1-1 Supervisor Peter DeJarnette for being a great liaison between the Aurelian team and the telecommunicators on the other end. 
• 9-1-1 Dispatcher Kathleen Cassels for providing wonderful feedback with unparalleled responsiveness that drove our pace of iteration early on.

“I’m not exaggerating to say Aurelian is blowing our minds with their tech, responsiveness and refreshingly genuine passion for public service.” – Kurt Mills, Director