Delivering round the clock homelessness support through our out of hours service

Issue

As with many public-sector providers around the UK, Rossendale Borough Council wants to provide high quality 24-hour customer service for citizens who need immediate support with certain urgent situations. Councils have to deal with a wide range of requests and, increasingly, offering these out of hours services can be very costly – and especially challenging when faced with resource shortages.

Insight

Emergencies requiring council support don't confine themselves to office hours. You want to be sure that you are getting the same level of expert advice and help, even when the office is closed. 

Our approach

Rossendale Borough Council initially commissioned our ‘response out of hours’ service for emergency planning. But, as this had proved so successful, the council extended the contract to support with emergency homelessness calls.

We worked closely with the council to develop full procedure workbooks and dedicated customer scripts developed specifically around emergency planning and emergency homelessness. Detailed training and call practice sessions also took place before the team started to take live calls to ensure seamless and excellent customer service delivery.

Auditing and data intelligence

As well as detailed written call logs, all queries are voice recorded. We regularly audit the calls to make sure that our service quality and accuracy remains to our high standards. We provide regular performance reports and the Council also has 24-hour access to their dedicated customer portal giving them ability to listen to calls, view call volumes received and query types.

Impact

We're helping Rossendale Borough Council cope with the increasing demands for a more responsive service. It means that emergency planning is available 24 hours a day, weekends and public holidays. Our agents are fully trained to determine the nature of the call and provide the necessary information and/or action.

One of the key services provided by our live agents includes allocating and booking emergency accommodation for eligible citizens.

Our service includes a virtual response service (IVR), which filters any ‘non-urgent’ calls by providing advice or, if appropriate, asking that the customer calls back during normal office hours. This ensures that our live out of hours advisors can focus on the most important enquiries that require immediate attention, removing any unnecessary costs.