Dice unveils human-like Quantum Operator to save time, money

BAY CITY, Mich. and NEW YORK--Dice Corporation, a provider of security industry dispatch software, has launched Quantum Operator, a software system designed using advanced human-like voice technologies to make and receive calls on alarms.

The system, launched in February, can handle 12 to 100 calls at a time, depending on how it is configured, and can allow human operators to concentrate on higher-level alarms. New York, N.Y.-based Statewide Monitoring recently installed Quantum Operator, and company president Steven Coppola said he has been pleased with the results. "It definitely gives us an edge because it eliminates our operators being tied up on non-emergency situations," Coppola said. "It increases our initial call response time for emergency conditions." According to Coppola, in the first month of operation Quantum Operator made 6,000 calls that human operators would have otherwise had to make, pre-Quantum. Such savings in man-hours translates directly to cost-savings.

According to Dice director of operations Philip DuPont, the savings in time and money to central stations using Quantum Operator will be significant. "It's both an inbound and an outbound interactive response system. The inbound portion is made mostly for technicians," DuPont said. "What they can do is call in to [Quantum Operator] and do things like place accounts on test or disable mode. They can actually go in to a live history read back mode. So they'll put the account on test, they'll have the live history running, and then they'll just walk around the location and trip the points. So that way they can get instantaneous feed-back from the system, instead of taking up an operator's time, which of course costs the central station money."

It's the outbound portion of Quantum Operator that's really exciting, insisted DuPont. "It's the portion that proactively makes calls, based on alarm conditions. Say for someone like Steven [Coppola], over at Statewide Monitoring, he actually has it set up for low batteries, AC power fails, and abnormal tests. So any time one those signals comes in, [Quantum Operator] will automatically intercept that signal instead of dropping it to an operator to handle," Dupont said. "At that point [Quantum Operator] can make the call out and inform anybody on the call list that, 'Hey, we received this alarm condition, we need you to acknowledge you received this alarm.' Once that has been acknowledged, they can hang up or they can be transferred back to a central station operator to set up a service call."

DuPont said the next few releases of Quantum Operator, just one of many coming products that will bear the Quantum name, will include such services as collection calls, service appointment notification, installation quality inspections, sales appointment reminders, and sales presentation calls.