The Lyon County Emergency Communication Center will begin a four month trial with Hyper starting in the next six weeks. The startup is based out of San Francisco and will allow the call center to use AI to handle non-emergency calls. A year-long staffing shortage is behind the switch.
“We wanted to try to find a way to lessen the load on our staff,” said Director of Lyon County Emergency Communication Roxy VanGundy. “So, that’s primarily why it’s starting. We want to find ways where we can work smarter and not as hard.”
The trial costs $16,000 and the county is using open-salary positions to pay for it. Lyon County takes on approximately 70,000 non-emergency calls a year. With the AI expected to take on 18,000 calls through February, it will allow staff to shift their focus on high emergency situations.
“We want to make sure we can do, is make sure they have time to communicate with our citizens during their worst moments, and also be there for our responders,” VanGundy said. “And when we are answering more non-emergency calls than emergency calls that tends to overload them.”
Once the trial starts, calling the non-emergency line puts you on with an AI dispatcher, but if the call escalates into an emergency, you will be transferred over to a human. The technology is also prepared to take calls with non-English speakers as well.
“If a Spanish speaking caller, or anyone who speaks a different language has their phone set to a specific language set, if they call into us, that is going to be recognized by the AI,” VanGundy said.
VanGundy said she expects some negative feedback with these changes.
“I don’t expect our community to fully embrace it right away because it is different, it is a different way of interacting with emergency services, so it’s going to be a learning curve for everybody,” VanGundy said.
This new AI service will just be for the non-emergency line. If you call 911, you will always be talking to a human. It’s not known at this time time if AI will be here to stay after the trial, but VanGundy told 27 News that, if one thing is for certain, it’s that AI will not take over jobs from the current people in the call center. The software is simply filling the open spots at this time.
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