BENGALURU: City police will soon have
trained customer care executives
instead of policemen to attend to
distress calls
made to the
control room
. They are currently working on a tender to invite
BPOs
to take up the job of being Bengaluru’s dial 100 control rooms.
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There have been several issues with the control room. Besides calls going unanswered, lack of empathy and professionalism are the other major complaints. While cops are hoping to change this with trained customer care executives to be call receivers, the move is already facing opposition.
One of the concerns raised is that non-police personnel cannot be entrusted the task of dealing with emergencies. However, senior officers leading the project said the government has been convinced of the effectiveness of the proposed change and it has been approved.
Police commissioner Praveen Sood, explaining the proposed structure of the new control rooms, said call centre employees will be given a procedure to follow, according to which they will enter the details of the calls. “The new set-up will allow them to record complaints as the call comes in and feed in the information into the system from where it goes to the dispatch officer. For about 10 call takers, there will be one dispatch officer who will be a cop. While the job of the call centre employee is getting information from the caller, the decision on sending a response team will be taken by the police officer,” he said.
They are looking for professionals with knowledge of at least three major languages. “What we noticed at the London Metropolitan police control room was that they were able to communicate with citizens in over 80 languages. In case of a foreign language speaker, they would connect the call to a language expert. We can’t have the technology here, but Bengaluru being a multilingual city, language diversity among the call takers can be used to expand the capabilities,” he added.