The 'prehistoric' top cop and his contact centre evolution

Once a ‘digital dinosaur’, whose most complex piece of technology was a typewriter, Greg Flint has evolved into a digital immigrant. As Acting Superintendent, Manager Policelink Branch for the Queensland Police Service (QPS), Flint has successfully led the state’s Policelink project. Flint explains to Merri Mack how he went from operational policing to heading up a major information technology project.

Policelink is a dedicated multichannel, non-urgent police contact centre intended to improve client service, as well as enhance operational capacity and integrated contact management. It allows people to report non-urgent crimes on a dedicated phone number (131 444). Through the various channels and services offered, the centre has answered over one million calls since going live in July 2010. It has a link to Facebook where people share their experiences and knowledge.

Flint led the project from inception to delivery. This included procurement decisions for an advanced contact centre platform, one that supports multichannel service delivery to the community and front-line staff. Unlike many projects that don’t come in on time or budget, Flint successfully met both objectives.

“This was personally satisfying, and it was extremely rewarding working in a collaborative way with a team of people who had commitment and resolve to succeed, and deliver a high-quality product,” says Flint.

Of course, there were challenges.

Flint says: “Coming to grips with the technology and the architecture to make the correct decisions was one challenge.”

To deliver the project, Flint worked with a variety of sources, including a project team, partner agencies, branches within QPS, and supporting vendors. Select partners that support Policelink then and now include Alcatel-Lucent, Dimension Data, Sword Ciboodle for CRM, Nice Systems and Telstra.

“This was an exciting project with multiagency dynamics and partnership with Smart Service Queensland and the Department of Public Works (DPW). We had to maximise the government spend by deploying common technologies across agencies wherever possible,” says Flint.

“Our evaluation of Policelink shows it has lived up to expectations, and provides important support for front-line staff. It has proved that we made the correct decisions at the procurement stage and our business modelling is paying dividends,” says Flint.

Policelink played a key support role during the disaster response to the flooding event in Toowoomba, Lockyer Valley, Ipswich and Brisbane. The centre also played a key role in registering people who were evacuated as a result of the impact of Cyclone Yasi in north Queensland.

The prime role of the Policelink contact centre was to provide a register of evacuees and answer a range of enquiries from the community. The centre also handled the overflow calls from 12 police station systems that experienced systems problems because of the floods.

From the time the major event lines were activated in response to events at Toowoomba and in the Lockyer Valley, until the floods receded in Brisbane and Ipswich, Policelink answered 16,570 calls received via the special event lines. With Cyclone Yasi, the centre answered 7934 calls via the major event line, and registered over 5500 evacuees.

Social media played an important and complementary role in keeping the community informed. The QPS Facebook site had hundreds of thousands of hits.

“I believe that having Facebook in place alleviated call demand at the centre. The site was vital for people to keep up to date,” said Flint.

The challenge for 2012 is to expand the online service and alternate channel offerings, and enhance the ability to monitor social media.

*Greg Flint is Acting Superintendent, Manager Policelink Branch for the Queensland Police Service (QPS). He has been in QPS for more than 28 years, including a one man police station at Jericho, and has worked in a variety of roles and locations throughout the state during his career. Flint has also done two tours of duty in East Timor in peace-keeping roles.