DENVER — People calling Denver's non-emergency number will be greeted by an automated operator instead of a live human come Thursday, the city announced.
Callers into the non-emergency line (720-913-2000) will tell the interactive voice response (IVR) system what they need assistance with. They will then be routed to the appropriate city entity, person, or information, according to a news release.
Calls to 911 will still be handled by humans.
"Currently, a great deal of calls that come through the non-emergency line just need to go somewhere else. And so the 911 team are acting essentially as switchboard operators," explained Andrew Dameron, director of Denver 911.
Now, with Smart IVR, Dameron said the 911 team can focus on true emergencies.
"The hope is that that workload will come down, which then frees up our call takers to be available for the next 911 call that comes through where we do have a life or death emergency that they need to manage," Dameron said.
Check out a demo of the automated operator in the video below:
Officials said callers to the non-emergency line will still be able to talk to a real person by requesting a live operator. The computer will also transfer calls to a live person if the system does not understand what a caller says, the caller does not speak English or it cannot assist with the request.
Dameron said neighboring Jefferson County launched a similar system and saw a 39% reduction in calls where Smart IVR was able to fulfill a caller's need without transferring it to a call taker.
The city said the new IVR system was launched to better handle the little over 1.6 million calls it receives yearly.
