On October 5^th, 6^th, & 7^th of 2007 the Susquehanna County 911 Center hosted two separate training classes for dispatchers, in conjunction with First Contact 911 out of California. The first class, “Customer Service in the Dispatch Center” was held on Friday October 5^th.

Customer Service in the Dispatch Center involves more than just being nice on the telephone.  It means being 'in the moment' to assist the public, our responders as well as our co-workers to the best of our ability, even when it means dealing with people who do not understand the complexity of exactly what we do.

Susquehanna County 911 Dispatchers understand that our Customers are the people we deal with in the progression of our shift. This includes Police Officers, Firefighters, EMS Personnel, Alarm Company Dispatchers, the general public, and many other people. So much of what we do involves HOW we say something. Customer Service skills can be used for both emergency calls and 'other' non-emergency calls that tend to frustrate us. Dispatchers learned how to establish trust and rapport with difficult callers, how to gain valuable information on each call that will help our responders to better serve the public.

For newer members of the Dispatch Staff, this course gave them valuable tools that can be used everyday - both in and outside the Center. For old hands, this course not only reinforced what they already knew, but reminded them of why we became 9-1-1 dispatchers in the first place, to assist those in need with the passion that will truly make a difference.

On Saturday and Sunday October 6^th & 7^th we conducted an

Incident Dispatcher - All Risk/All Hazard class.

This class is great for dispatchers who work primarily in a consolidated Center, or who may deploy as an IDT to a Fire, Law or EMS event. We covered all the bases of the "All Risk - All Hazard" model provided by the Federal Emergency Management Agency. This class explored fire, law, EMS, man-made and natural disasters and pre-planned events.

With this training Incident Dispatchers can respond to any type of incident and immediately assist the Incident Commander by establishing incident documentation, a communications plan and being a resource ‘go-to’ person that has the power of the Communications Center at the Incident Command Post.

Using experience gained over 15 years as Incident Dispatchers and Managers, our Instructor showed what it takes to be an Incident Dispatcher for our Agency, how to assemble a Local Government IDT Team, how to assemble resources and respond to an incident, and to provide Mutual Aid as an IDT.

Attending these classes were dispatchers from around Pennsylvania and New York. Agencies represented were Susquehanna County 911, Broome County Communication, NY, Carnegie Mellon University Police Pittsburg, New Hartford, NY, Allentown, Pa, and Northampton, Pa.

A SPECIAL THANK YOU to: Broome County Communications and Lackawanna County for bringing their Communications Command vehicles for the students to observe and get familiar with the work environment that they will be in during a major incident.

Submitted by; Stephen Frederick

Susquehanna County 911

Training Officer