NHS Direct choose Datapulse as Workforce Management Partner

Government Technology

Datapulse, the Reading-based communications specialists have beaten off stiff competition to supply NHS Direct with an effective workforce management solution for their 22 sites across the UK.

NHS Direct operates a 24 hour nurse advice and information service, providing confidential information. The organisation employs 1,600 agents, fielding 550,000 calls a month. This is expected to grow over the next three years, with call levels topping 400,000 per week and the number of agents handling them increasing to 5,000. The contract comes as NHS Direct completed an 18 month long review of systems in an effort to identify an effective way of balancing the delivery of first class service to the public with the best possible working conditions for its agents.

"NHS Direct has seen rapid growth since its launch and our existing system was not coping with the demands of scheduling extra staff," explains Phil Campling, NHS Direct Telecommunications Analyst. "We needed to update the system in order to maintain the standard of service and an equitable working environment for our agents."

Paul Jenkins, head of the NHS Direct project team continues: "Our objective was to deliver the best possible service to the public. To achieve this, we have to recruit qualified nursing staff as our agents. It's essential that we provide an attractive working environment, and one of the most important things for them is the ability to work flexibly. Datapulse have provided us with a solution that does just that."

"We recognised early on in our relationship with NHS Direct that they face different challenges to many contact centres." says Steve Willert, Datapulse's call centre specialist. "Call profiling is particularly difficult, which has an effect on scheduling agents' shifts. An 'off-the-shelf' package would not have been able to cope with their requirements. We recommended Teleopti Contact Center Coach to NHS Direct because it empowers the agents and is flexible enough to grow with the Service as the number of calls increase"

Teleopti CCC is a complete workforce management solution that integrates with ACD/CTI platforms, providing all the information and tools needed to make effective decisions about call centre staffing. In addition to automatically forecasting call volumes and scheduling agents, it provides insight into performance levels and enables supervisors to react quickly to changes in call centre activity.

"Contact Center Coach provides NHS Direct with a number of benefits,? concludes Willert. ?It helps them to achieve a higher utilisation of resources which reduces operating costs and improves customer service levels by effectively controlling queuing. It also increases agent productivity and retention allowing staff to enter preferences on how and when they work."