Neuro Linguistic Programming Practitioner Midlands
The Advanced Communication Learning Path of the West Midlands 999 Call Centre Team
In an emergency we instinctively call 999, expect the operators to understand what is happening and to get help to us, fast. Helping the West Midlands 999 Call Centre Team develop their advanced communication skills is Worcestershire-based company, The Learning Path.
During a year, West Midlands Police receive around 660,000 emergency calls through its 999 Emergency Call centre. Eighty percent of these are answered within their target time of 10 seconds, enabling Her Majesty’s Inspectorate to rate them as giving excellent customer service and call handling.
For the staff answering the calls of Britain’s second largest police force, there’s no knowing what to expect; the variety is as great as the uncertainty. One moment they may be dealing with a victim of a serious assault, the next a homeowner discovering a break-in is taking place. Both are distressing for the people involved and each caller needs to be assured that help is on its way.
Often, the person is calling 999 for the first time. With many emotions being given within the call, details needing to be given and facts understood, the 999 call centre staff need to keep the caller calm, avoid jumping to conclusions, ask the right questions, obtain the information required and collate it quickly. Many callers are immigrants, for whom English is not their first or even second language.
Advanced communication training from The Learning Path has been given to members of the West Midlands 999 Call Centre Team as part of its continual development programme. Experienced staff has found it a useful refresher and new starters have been able to apply the techniques straight away, enabling them to understand and adapt their language to each new caller.
Unlike the ambulance service which has call scripts to guide each caller through a series of questions, the police tailor every call to the perceived situation.
"Often, situations are very different to how they first appear," explained Supervisor, David Powers. "We had a call from a very drunk gentleman who claimed his friend had jumped over a wall and needed help. It would have been easy to assume it was a time-wasting call. However the call handler used the skills learnt to ask different questions and used phrases easily understood by a distressed and drunken person. By the end of the call it was established that his friend had indeed jumped over a wall and that an ambulance was needed quickly because a 30 feet drop on the other side meant he was seriously injured."
Recognising and overcoming barriers to communication is a major part of their work. Sometimes there is a language barrier. Often it is a cultural issue and the way a person from one area expresses themselves will be different to someone from another part of the West Midlands. Matching their language is paramount to enable callers feel they are being understood.
The active listening skills learnt in the course help with this process as call handlers check their understanding of the situation with the caller. They can then adapt their approach to suit whether they are talking to someone who prefers visual, auditory or kinaesthetic language.
Another aspect of the training received covers effective methods to guide and control a phone call. With mobile technology making it more difficult to determine the location of a caller or incident so operators need to ensure they guide the call to ensure all the pertinent information is obtained.
Presenting a positive image is also very important for the West Midlands 999 team. "We have to keep an open mind and put aside our personal opinions," said Dave Powers. "Soon after the training with The Learning Path, one of our new recruits received a call from a distressed gentleman saying he had been robbed in the street. The call handler used the techniques learnt, asking open and closed questions and going over information a few times to establish the situation and it turned out he had actually been attacked at gunpoint."
The Learning Path training also gave the team the opportunity to further improve their teamwork and talk openly about the situations they face. "We have a strong support structure in the centre, to help each other talk through the difficult scenarios we have faced and discuss how we could have handled things differently," continued Dave. "The advanced communication course helped us to take this a step further. The interactive activities were a good way of sharing how the techniques learnt can be applied to the scenarios we face everyday."
The Learning Path is now working with the West Midlands 999 Call Centre to ‘train the trainer’ so the course can be rolled out internally to all future recruits.