Tuesday, 29 September 2009

Emergency 999 SMS service trial - Teething problems!

As you probably already know, you can now contact the Emergency services by texting 999. This is a trial service and intended to let deaf, the hard of hearing and those who are speech-impaired to use the 999 service when they need the police , ambulance, fire rescue, or coastguard in the UK.

As it is, the service needs a lot of improvement:
This is an actual conversation with the 999 service. Note the time of the messages.

Observations:

1. In an emergency you really shouldn’t have to go through a registration process

2. A “?” isn’t really a helpful reply

3. Then 20 minutes after being told that the police has been dispatched I get another text to ask who I want to ‘speak’ to.

4. Dear operator, YOU’ve dispatched the police, why are you asking me where you’ve sent them??

5. And to conclude… “you can go now thats great, goodbye sk”? Well, sk, thank you but I didn’t realise I was working for you ;)




999


Update 30/09/09:

Reply from the Product Manager dated 29/09/2009 17:22

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Thanks for your feedback

You only need to register once, the next time you need the emergency services simply send a text message to 999.

Looking at the call logs the reason you got a text later was because your message saying "thank you" was delayed and then handled as a new call. The relay assistant should have looked at the history and seen that it was a continuation. I will make sure that the process is changed to make sure this does not happen in future.

Michael


Michael J Day

Text Relay Product Manager

Telephone: (020) 8546 1601

Textphone: 18001 020 8546 1601

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