SUMMIT COUNTY, Ohio — You never know what to expect when it comes to a new employee or co-worker.
But when it comes to Ava, Deputy Director of Administration, Samantha Fickes said the 24/7 artificial intelligence tool has been a perfect fit at Summit Emergency Communications Center.
She’s been really helpful being in our dispatch center and helping with the workload with our dispatchers,” said Fickes.
Even Max Keenan, CEO of the Seattle-based company, Aurelian, agrees.
“Being able to give them a little bit of a reprieve on the non-emergency calls, they’re able to focus more of their time and energy on the actual 911 calls,” said Keenan.
About a year ago, News 5 first told you about Ava, an AI agent the communications center has been using to only help answer non-emergency calls in Summit County.
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Since then, Fickes said Ava has proven to be useful like last November when she answered 237 non-emergency calls in just 10 minutes during a major storm.
Fast forward to March, Ava was there again when another large storm swept through and impacted all 11 communities in the center’s dispatch area.
“We had well over 700 calls in two and a half hours. Over 550 of those were non-emergency calls, so those all were answered by Ava,” said Fickes.
News 5 asked Fickes to explain how Ava helps their communications center as some people push back against the use of AI.
“There would’ve been calls that never would’ve gotten answered in the past just because we couldn’t physically get to the phone,” said Fickes.
Keenan said the pushback has been productive.
"These are good conversations to have with the community and can help explain like why you’re doing this and the impact that it’s having,” said Keenan.
Still, Fickes said there is some misinformation, so she reassures the dispatch center is getting every call.
She also said the dispatch center has set Ava up to notice if a call is an emergency so it can be transferred to dispatch, to ask the right questions and to have a regular conversation as if she’s a human.
“You’re still getting the same service again it’s just in a different way,” said Fickes.
Remi Murrey is the Summit and Medina counties reporter at News 5 Cleveland. Follow her on X @RMurreyTV, on Facebook RMurrey or email her at Remi.Murrey@wews.com.
