Welcome to our mini-series, where we hand over to an Onecom customer to tell their story of ‘business as unusual’ during the on-going pandemic. We will hear how they adapted operational and customer service models during lockdown, whilst continuing to deliver simply brilliant customer experiences.
Our third success story comes from Onecom customer British Red Cross, one of the UK’s largest non-profit organisations.
The British Red Cross helps millions of people in the UK and around the world when crisis strikes. With over 4,000 employees and over 32,000 volunteers in the UK alone, British Red Cross stands firmly as one of the best-known not-for-profit organisations, with a rich history since its inception in 1870.
Onecom partnered with British Red Cross in response to COVID-19, to implement a world-class cloud contact centre environment within a tight timeframe, allowing their geographically dispersed and remote volunteers to effectively answer phone calls from any location without complexity.
As the pandemic took hold in the UK, British Red Cross implemented a national support line to support the British public, aimed at providing a friendly voice to anyone finding it hard to access food or medication, or those feeling lonely, worried, or vulnerable. A separate support line for volunteer well-being was also put in place. In order to effectively implement this throughout lockdown, British Red Cross required a resilient, agile, and intuitive contact centre platform that allowed their volunteers to answer calls quickly and simply from their remote working home environments. The service needed to be very simple, user friendly, and responsive in order to best support their 100 volunteers, who range in technical ability and demographic.
Andrew Finlay, British Red Cross Head of Service Delivery, said: “British Red Cross have always had a strong reputation for providing support through a crisis, and the coronavirus pandemic is no different. We needed to rapidly deploy a solution that allowed our volunteers to answer calls without delay, regardless of location, without any compromise on voice quality.”
British Red Cross made the decision to implement a Mitel contact centre environment, delivered on Onecom’s Cloud Managed Service Platform, allowing volunteers to access the call centre environment from their mobile devices. The service design, approval, and implementation was agreed and fully functional within 7 days. This included a full private cloud infrastructure, and voice recording in place for the protection of the volunteers, as well as the caller.
Andrew Finlay continued, “Onecom’s solution has very quickly given us the capabilities to offer an effective service for supporting those who are vulnerable in our society, and those who simply need to hear a friendly voice. The Mitel interface is simple and flexible, feeding us vital statistics and giving the team flexibility to respond to fluctuations in demand when necessary”.
Volunteers are able to gain access to the contact centre platform via smartphone, with calls directly routed to the volunteer’s home phone or mobile when their presence setting is switched to ‘available’. The team consists of 100 agents that can handle up to 2,000 calls a day, with the ability to rapidly scale up if required.
“We knew that in order to effectively deploy a user-friendly solution we needed world-class technology partners, and we found that partnership in Onecom and Mitel."
"Having a simple, agile solution in place is not only allowing us to operate throughout the pandemic, but means we are more than prepared for any challenges yet to come, continuing to support the British public in their time of need.”
To understand more about the work British Red Cross are doing, and for information on the coronavirus support line, visit www.redcross.org.uk/get-help/coronavirus/support-line
To understand how Onecom could help your business deliver simply brilliant customer experiences and provide operational agility, chat to us today. We're proud to be supporting businesses throughout the pandemic with several free of charge remote working solutions, as well as working on long-term future success roadmaps in preparation for a new way of working.