Call Center

When Howard County's 911 call center opened 30 years ago, three call-takers used an arcane switchboard to field calls from an operator. Now, after a recent round of renovations and decades of technology upgrades, call-takers work with multiple computer screens, track locations with GPS technology and use pictometry to render real-time, digital 3-D images of any building in the county. For all the technological advances, the staff still fields the traditional calls for help, such as helping frightened residents deliver babies or survive heart attacks.

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Complaints are growing in Howard County about a company under state contract that takes calls on child-support issues from people in 11 Maryland counties. Howard officials are so frustrated by what they say is poor service that they are thinking about doing without. Spherix Inc. of Beltsville, which sells everything from a new sugar substitute to a maggot pesticide, operates the call center, which handles inquiries about government functions. To handle child-support inquiries, 30 operators field about 30,000 calls a year, said Louis Curry III, deputy director of the state's Child Support Enforcement Administration.

I sat with Kate Schulz and Stephanie Halcott, social workers with headsets, as they answered pleas for help at the United Way of Central Maryland's fifth-floor 211 call center overlooking Lombard Street. People who've lost their jobs and who've contemplated suicide, people who've lost their homes and had to move into a relative's abode, people who've run out of food and money - they all call this place. More so, of course, since the Great Recession and its long, grinding aftermath.

Howard County should have a 311 nonemergency call center similar to one used in Baltimore, according to Republican county executive candidate Christopher J. Merdon. Merdon said that if he is elected, he would open a call center as part of a plan to use technology to modernize county services. "In a lot of ways, Howard County still operates like an old farm county government," he said at a news conference at his Ellicott City campaign headquarters on U.S. 40. It is time, he said, for the growing county of more than a quarter-million people to modernize.

IKEA International A/S plans to open a call center in White Marsh Monday, the Swedish Home furnishings retailer said yesterday. The center on Franklin Square Drive will be one of two centers taking calls from catalog customers and others seeking information. It will also become IKEA's fourth business operation planned or open in the state. There is an IKEA store in White Marsh and another planned in College Park. And the company recently announced that it would build a 1.7 million-square-foot distribution center in Perryville.

Anne Arundel County's 911 call center suffers from a lack of organization, understaffing and inadequate training for employees, according to an independent review required by a settlement with the family of a slain Glen Burnie pharmacist. The 33-page report, whose results were announced yesterday, faulted management of the call center, but stopped short of condemning Anne Arundel's call takers or the police, saying recently appointed Chief James Teare Sr. and other top officials are "committed to improving the service level" in the police department's communications division.

When Howard County's 911 call center opened 30 years ago, three call-takers used an arcane switchboard to field calls from an operator. Now, after a recent round of renovations and decades of technology upgrades, call-takers work with multiple computer screens, track locations with GPS technology, and use pictometry to render real-time, digital 3-D images of any building in the county. For all the technological advances, the staff still fields the traditional calls for help such as helping frightened residents deliver babies or survive heart attacks.

Comcast Cablevision of Maryland LP is expected to announce today the creation of 80 jobs at its national call center in White Marsh. The jobs would support customer assistance for the cable television company's Comcastome Internet access service.Rep. Robert L. Ehrlich Jr. and Baltimore County Executive C. A. Dutch Ruppersberger are to attend a ribbon-cutting at the call center this morning.Comcast, which sells cable service to more than 300,000 customers in Howard, Harford and Baltimore counties, opened the call center Jan. 23. The unit initially employed 40 people.

For the second time in less than a year, a 911 operator in Anne Arundel County will be disciplined for dozing off while working a late shift, police said yesterday. A supervisor at the emergency call center in Millersville had to rouse a female dispatcher from a nap about 4:30 a.m. March 20, said the center's commander, Capt. Tim Bowman. At the time, all of the telephone lines in the call center were quiet. Police declined to identify the operator, saying it was a personnel matter. "Fortunately, there was no public safety issue in this circumstance," Bowman said.

Spurred by recent service disruptions on MARC trains, the Maryland Transit Administration has extended the hours of its customer call center and put other measures in place to respond to customer concerns. Starting immediately, call center hours will roughly match the hours the commuter rail service operates. The center will remain open from 6 a.m. to 11 p.m. Monday through Friday "until further notice." The center had closed at 7 p.m. — long before the last MARC trains of the day left their stations.

A prominent Baltimore city councilman is raising questions about a possible merger of emergency and non-emergency workers in a shared dispatch center, with labor leaders worrying that the idea could be a precursor to stripping dozens of employees of union representation. Councilman Bernard C. "Jack" Young, a leading candidate for City Council president, has called for a hearing on a plan to combine the city's 311 and 911 call centers, which officials say is in early stages of discussion.

It's plenty bad at a time when the city is laying off employees and closing firehouses that the manager of Baltimore's 311 center, Lisa Allen, would think that her 80 workers needed matching polo shirts, slacks and sweaters or hooded sweat shirts - to the tune of $24,000. According to Ms. Allen, the uniforms are necessary to "promote professionalism and consistency" and to impress the officials from other cities who stop by the 311 call center. Here's guessing that impressing visiting dignitaries isn't at the top of the 311 center's mission statement and wouldn't make anybody's list for the city's top priorities.

IN 1996, Baltimore was the first U.S. city to adopt 311 as the number for non-emergency police calls. The reason: Roughly 60 percent of 911 calls in the city did not deal with life-or-death situations at all. Some people would even call to find out the starting time of baseball games. Baltimore has spent $2.6 million to revamp its 311 setup, making the number now the one-stop call center for all city services. Thirty-seven customer service agents staff it 24 hours a day, seven days a week, sitting before flickering computer consoles in the same room at the police headquarters where emergency calls are answered.