South Carolina 811 is dedicated to preventing damage to underground infrastructure. By providing education and communication between member utilities, excavators, and homeowners regarding digging, South Carolina 811 is the hub of damage prevention best practices for South Carolina.
There are 41 customer service representatives at South Carolina 811 and the organization processes about 1.3 million inbound notifications on average per year. More than 1,600 member utility companies participate in SC811’s 36 training programs.
Online Training with Irth Boosts Accuracy of 811 Tickets to Ensure Safety and Improve Efficiency
South Carolina 811 (SC811) trusted the expertise of the Irth team when it sought an online replacement for its learning management system used to train excavators and other external users who submit 811 tickets. While Irth Training & Operator Qualifications, also known as Coursettra, is a solid tool on its own, SC811 valued its integration with Irth’s damage prevention and one call center notification platform. Today, SC811 uses Coursettra for external and internal training, to onboard new customer service representatives (CSRs) to its fully remote team, gain additional insights into 811 ticket accuracy, and improve efficiency and accuracy in the 811 ticket process.
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Problem
As the primary resource for damage prevention of underground infrastructure, South Carolina 811 had a basic learning management system for excavators, but they wanted a more comprehensive online platform. They selected Irth Training & Operator Qualifications.
While transitioning its external excavator training to Coursettra, a more robust platform, the COVID pandemic hit. South Carolina 811 hadn’t launched the new system yet for excavators but needed to pivot their plans to train customer service representatives remotely. Not only were they transitioning external users to a new platform, but they also had to figure out how to shift to an online protocol for training CSRs – a much more granular curriculum.
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Solution
SC811 migrated all its classroom training materials for CSRs online to Coursettra. They first launched online CSR training from the platform so CSRs would continue providing quality service despite the pandemic’s stay-at-home orders. CSRs deal with everything from the field, including inquiries from homeowners and excavators to myriad other questions covering technical details, locates, and every aspect of an 811 ticket. As a result, CSRs require extensive training to do their jobs effectively.
After launching internal online training first, SC811 circled back to develop their external training for excavators from the Coursettra platform.
Coursettra’s robust capabilities allow SC811 and online learners to:
Learn at their own pace: While there are advantages to in-person learning, such as interpersonal interaction, online learning gets people to the SC811 call center faster because every learner can access the materials at their own pace.
Lean on digital preferences: Employees entering the workforce are more likely to be digitally savvy and often digital natives who prefer online training. Because learners get through the foundational training quickly, they can advance to more specialized training sooner.
Ramp quickly: SC811 can dropship equipment to their remote CSR team and get them into training on day one of employment.
Assess training effectiveness: Coursettra’s baseline reporting provides SC811 data regarding the most missed questions. SC811 digs even further into that data to identify learning deficits and determine how to close those gaps.
Sync online and in-person training: Every training a user completes in the Coursettra platform, whether a webinar, in-person, or online, is tracked in the platform, so users get full credit regardless of where the training happens.
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Results
SC811’s goal is to make sure people are safe — and ensuring quality 811 tickets is key to that goal.
SC811’s Executive Director, Misty Wise said, “Coursettra ensures the quality process for 811 tickets submitted by external users. Being able to see that quality performance is a game-changer for our industry.”
Since approximately 80% of SC811’s ticket volume is done online, not by an agent, ensuring external users know how to provide all the necessary details on a ticket is essential. Using Irth’s one call center notification’s automation, the system will automatically send notifications to alert users when they didn’t complete tickets adequately and when remedial training might be necessary. This is an essential part of the quality control process.
“Tying all those tools together through the platform is a huge value add for our users,” said Wise.
With the more robust training Coursettra enabled, SC811 continues to build the volume of qualities — a quality review process for inbound tickets from external users — the CSRs can handle. This ensures a quality ticket for a locator to perform the functions they need to effectively, thereby reducing damages.
In addition, South Carolina 811 has a 100% remote CSR team that is now trained online through Irth Operations & Qualifications.
Learn More About Our Solutions
Irth's market-leading SaaS platform improves resilience and reduces risk in the sustainable delivery of essential services that millions of people and businesses rely on every day. Energy, utility, and telecom companies across the U.S. and Canada trust Irth for damage prevention, training, asset inspections, and land management solutions. Powered by business intelligence, analytics, and geospatial data, our platform helps deliver the 360-degree situational awareness needed to proactively mitigate and manage risk of critical network infrastructure in a changing environment. Irth has been the top provider for 811 (one call) ticket management and utility locating software since 1995.
