24/7 Software Blog

In 2014, we wrote the original version of this article because of an epiphany.

At the time, it baffled us how often we discussed all the actions that lead to increased or decreased response times, such as awareness and communication, without focusing on response times in general.

And most importantly, why they are so extremely important for your property’s operation.

Thankfully, we experienced clear skies and warm weather down here in Florida that helped us think clearly.

That led us to write this short and sweet gem on response times.

The original version of this article might be an artifact by now.

But the information and insight you pull from everything we have below are as important today as it was in 2014.

“Equifax will pay up to $700 million in fines and monetary relief to consumers over a 2017 data breach at the credit reporting bureau that affected nearly 150 million people,” write Avie Schneider and Chris Arnold in their recent NPR article entitled “Equifax To Pay Up To $700 Million In Data Breach Settlement.”

According to the article, “The proposed settlement, which is subject to approval by a federal court, was announced Monday by the company, the Federal Trade Commission, the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, 48 states, the District of Columbia and Puerto Rico.”

“The consumer data exposed in the breach included Social Security numbers, birthdates and addresses and, in some cases, driver's license numbers,” Schneider and Arnold explain.

The NPR piece continues “CFPB Director Kathleen Kraninger said the settlement includes $425 million to cover the ‘time and money [people affected by the breach] spent to protect themselves from potential threats of identity theft or addressing incidents of identity theft as a result of the breach."

“Equifax also agreed to pay $175 million to the states and $100 million to the CFPB in civil penalties,” the article notes.

According to Schneider and Arnold, “starting in January, Equifax ‘will provide all U.S. consumers with six free credit reports each year for seven years,’ the FTC said. That's in addition to the free annual credit reports that Equifax, and the two other nationwide credit reporting agencies — Experian and TransUnion — currently provide.”

Do you oversee operations at a convention center?

If you’re charged with any role at one, you know that processes, people, and information are vital to your efficiency.

Your role doesn’t matter either.

You’re still tasked with making sure your property is running smoothly and looking good.

Location inspection software can quickly enhance your operation to help you achieve both.

We’re going to show you how this software solution augments your property’s efficiency.

• Improve execution and accountability of staff and the control of information between all of your departments.

As a leader of your convention center, the safety, experience, and lasting impression you create for your customers, always rests on your shoulders.

Do you agree?

These solutions help.

And we’re going to show you how.

It’s time to increase efficiency at your property using location inspection software.

Are you ready for Proactive Operations?

“One afternoon three years ago, Chelsey Vance decided to go for a walk. She took some ibuprofen before she left her Nashville, Tenn., apartment. She didn't know then that she was allergic to the medication,” writes Abigail Clukey in their recent NPR article entitled “Once Considered Creepy, Location Apps Now Seen As Critical For Safety, Logistics.”

Clukey continues, “About halfway down the trail, she felt like she was going to faint. Vance sent her roommate her location through iMessage and asked the roommate to come pick her up. She soon began fading in and out of consciousness as she went into anaphylactic shock.”

"I could feel my throat closing up, and I couldn't see anything. I couldn't find my phone to call 911, because I guess I dropped it when I was passing out," Vance says in the NPR piece.

“Because her roommate had her exact location, the roommate was able to find Vance quickly and call an ambulance. Vance credits the location-sharing service as the reason she's alive today. She now uses apps like Find My Friends to share her location with her boyfriend and close friends indefinitely, so they can find her immediately in case anything like that happens again,” Clukey explains.

According to the article, “Vance's story exemplifies one of the most obvious purposes of location sharing: safety. But it's used much more often in nonemergency situations. Modern relationships have become defined by the constant communication enabled by smartphones. Josh Constine, editor at large of the website TechCrunch, said constant checking-in through location sharing is the next natural step.”

We think so too.

And, of course, you know that anything related to safety will catch our attention.

This article resonated quickly.

Keep reading; we’re going to share why.

Today is your busiest day of the year.

Your customer-to-staff ratio is 15:1, and the incident calls immediately start coming into the operations center.

Between each incident call, you’re receiving eight to 10 customer requests for random issues.

Wheelchair requests are coming in hand over fist with no end in sight.

Your team is challenged with mitigating the high frequency of incidents occurring.

Your staff is having trouble handling customer requests coming in through the radio, and the calls are so backed up people are complaining – some have even left.

There’s no differentiation of inflow and outflow for requests versus incidents.

Your incident calls are taking priority, and wheelchairs aren’t making it to the customer.

Housekeeping issues are being neglected.

Routing all calls through one individual is creating chaos and breaking down the operation when it should be moving quickly.

Your operation suddenly falls behind, leaving you helpless.

How do you respond?

Your team is in disarray.

Do you have any idea how to pull them out of this mess?

Don’t sweat it – anymore.

We’re going to show you an easy way to avoid these customer service traps.

“Algorithms were around for a very long time before the public paid them any notice. The word itself is derived from the name of a 9th-century Persian mathematician, and the notion is simple enough: an algorithm is just any step-by-step procedure for accomplishing some task, from making the morning coffee to performing cardiac surgery,” writes Geoff Nunberg in their recent NPR article entitled “Algorithmic Intelligence Has Gotten So Smart, It's Easy To Forget It's Artificial.”

“Computers use algorithms for pretty much everything they do — adding up a column of figures, resizing a window, saving a file to disk. But all those things usually just happen the way they're supposed to. We don't have to think about what's going on under the hood,” explains Nunberg.

Nunberg continues, “But algorithms got harder to ignore when they started taking over tasks that used to require human judgment — deciding which criminal defendants get bail, winnowing job applications, prioritizing stories in a news feed. All at once, the media are full of disquieting headlines like ‘How to Manage our Algorithmic Overlords’ and ‘Is the Algorithmification of the Human Experience a Good Thing?"

According to the NPR article, “Ordinary muggles may not know exactly how an algorithm works its magic, and a lot of people use the word just as a tech-inflected abracadabra.”

“So it's natural to be wary of our new algorithmic overlords. They've gotten so good at faking intelligent behavior that it's easy to forget that there's really nobody home,” Nunberg remarks later in the piece.

Of course, this got us thinking about the evolution of Proactive Operations.