We value your call…

The Northern Echo reports: EMERGENCY calls are being handled faster than ever by police in North Yorkshire…

Apparently new figures show that in the past few months the force has responded to more 999 calls within ten seconds (here we go with the bloody stats manipulation again).

This might suggest to the public that NYP are once again meeting the public expectations for police dealing with their problem… Not so.

When you read further into the report, the ‘response’ is only to your call, not the bobby arriving to actually deal with your problem. In some cases the real response can be in the region of hours and days, not minutes and seconds.

The average time to answer an emergency call might have fallen to ‘about 4.7 seconds from more than six seconds in August’ however, the NYP spokesperson crowing about being “delighted with the results” should temper that enthusiasm and look more deeply into the area of operations after the call handling.

It may be the case that…

“Both management and staff have been working hard to achieve this improvement and will be working equally hard to make sure that we maintain this level of service.”

The management method within police call centres often holds no credence with the actual concept of ‘customer service’, despite shouting about its values from the rooftops. Managers find it far easier to manipulate a few call stats figures to ‘prove a point’ than to address the wider issues.

They don’t mention that police call centre staff are often working with faulty or substandard systems, are bullied by incompetent managers, are treated like machines, often receive poor levels of training and, are being expected in real terms, to work longer hours for more days with less time off for no extra money.

Public sector workers have it easy? Do you want to work like that? I don’t think so!