Voice Surveys Utilized in Employee Emergency Accountability System

Managing personnel in a large company is complex. It stands to reason that the more employees a company has, the harder it is to keep track of them, especially during an emergency. AEC has tens of thousands of employees nationwide. When disaster strikes, the company operates an employee accountability application that allows employees to check in and report their current status. The omnichannel communications program will enable employees to self-report their current condition and how severely the disaster has affected them and their families.

AEC needed a reliable, scalable and secure voice-powered solution that could collect data for quick analysis by management.

Solution

AEC uses a multi-channel communications solution that allows employees to verify their current situation and safety status over email, SMS or voice. “We want to make sure we have multiple ways for employees to report their status,” noted AEC’s emergency preparedness program manager. When an incident occurs, the employee accountability application sends a signal to those employees who live in the affected area and asks them to check-in. 

For the voice channel, AEC uses the Plum Voice survey application, Plum Insight. To check in with the voice channel, employees call an 800 number and select the option for the employee accountability app. The call automatically transfers them to the Plum Voice platform, where they complete the survey. 

In a matter of minutes, employees identify themselves with their employee number and answer three basic questions that notate their current situation:

1. Are you evacuated from your home?
2. Are you and your family okay?
3. Is your residence habitable?

This information/ data gets passed back to AEC’s employee accountability app in real-time, allowing management to see each employee’s status and feed the data into their metrics and reporting. All data collected is stored in AEC’s designated database, not on the Plum Voice platform, to ensure that personal information is secure.

Regarding internal applications, completing a survey by voice is tactical for AEC. It doesn’t go to all employees every time a signal goes out. The alerts are geographically specific and sent only to affected employees in a particular area. There may be a loss of internet service or power, or a mobile device has limited battery life; therefore, an employee can call via landline to check in.

Results

AEC was able to pull together a multichannel emergency accountability system that can quickly size up or down for their needs.

The voice-based channel differs from the email and SMS channels because it can ask multiple questions vs. a single question about evacuation. “The hotline allows and provides much more detail than SMS or email. It gives us greater granularity regarding the data an employee can provide on their status.”

The survey application also functions as a backup when the other channels aren’t working correctly. When AEC had issues with its SMS system, the company looked into the capacity of the voice survey system to be the sole communication channel. Plum Voice’s platform could handle calls from all of their 180,000 employees simultaneously.

AEC’s emergency preparedness team subsequently notified all employees that they should use the voice channel if other channels don’t function properly. Plum Voice’s platform guarantees 99.9% uptime with quick response scalability, providing the reliability that AEC needs.

The voice survey application is an active communications option and a proactive safety valve for AEC’s employee accountability system.