Case Studies
Carers UK team up with OPEX Hosting to support home working volunteers
Background
With 6.5 million carers across Great Britain, charity organisation Carers UK was set up nearly 50 years ago to offer support to unpaid carers looking after family or friends. Providing a telephone advice line to help sustain carers with emotional support and guidance, they recently appointed 10 home-based volunteers to complement the 2 office based advisors who collectively handle over 100 calls a day.
The solution
Carers UK identified a need for call recording to support this pilot ‘volunteer project’ and when deciding on a system to adopt, sought advice from the telephone helpline association in recommending vendors. OPEX Hosting came out top on value for money and providing vital features,
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Emily Hodge, Project Manager at Carers UK said “the call recording system was easy to implement, user friendly and easy to manage following a brief training session. After a one month trial, I was keen to continue using OPEX as the customer service was second to none and the shift changing function was easy to administer.” |
Receiving calls on their advice helpline the OPEX call routing function enables the volunteer on duty to take the call from the comfort of their own home, a key factor in being able to offer quality and compassionate listeners.
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Not only was the charity unable to house a ‘call centre’ at their Southwark offices, volunteers have no additional travel costs and a key factor in recruiting them for the role was the ability to provide a flexible working environment, something the OPEX system has facilitated. |
The primary role of the volunteer is to be there in a listening capacity and it is important that the boundaries between counselling and simply listening are not crossed. The OPEX call recording system has provided the ability to give de-briefs and feedback by sharing and playing back calls whilst allowing Carers UK to ensure volunteers do not undertake counselling and advising.
Recordings are also played back by the Project Manager to assess how the volunteers are handling calls, empathising with callers and due to the sensitive nature of some of the calls assess the impact of the call on the volunteer. These calls are then shared within a private group forum and used to hold remote training sessions as a way to improve response handling and better preparing the volunteers for different situations.
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