By Sara Castellanos, The Aurora Sentinel
Original publication date: March 30, 2011

Aurora, Colo. — Aurora’s 9-1-1 Call Center is in a league of its own.

The call center on Tuesday received the “2010 Outstanding 9-1-1 Call Center” award out of more than 8,000 call centers in the nation.

The award was presented by the E9-1-1 Institute to a few call center staff members at an awards gala in Washington, D.C., that was attended by more than 550 people.

“We were very honored,” said Michael Bedwell, the city’s police and fire dispatch center manager. “We work very hard to become an outstanding call center. We’ve got a great staff, and it’s really nice just to be recognized on a national level for what we’ve done.”

The call center received the award for its high level of customer service even in the face of budget cuts, handling of emergency situations and management of new technology.

The center receives about 400,000 calls per year.

Last year, the call center’s employees completed a total of 10,400 hours of training on customer service and emergency dispatch procedures.

“We’ve instituted a huge amount of new training programs with our center, but we’ve done it all with our own staff,” Bedwell said. “So we have ongoing training and education almost all the time here. We’re not using any outside resources and spending any funds to bring people to train us or send people out for training.”

The call center’s employees have helped people in numerous emergency situations.

“We’ve delivered several babies over the phone, we’ve taught people how to do CPR over the phone,” Bedwell said.

The E9-1-1 Institute, which presented the award to Aurora’s call center, is a nonprofit organization and a branch of the NextGen 9-1-1 Caucus, run by members of Congress to educate people about the importance of emergency response systems.

Posted with permission of The Aurora Sentinel.

Related Link

• “Life Inside Aurora’s (Colo.) 9-1-1 Call Center,” by Sara Castellanos, The Aurora Sentinel, April 7, 2011.