ICAS
ICAS is a leading provider of employee support and behavioural risk management services supporting more than 1.5 million employees in over 700 companies worldwide.
The Business Challenge
The organisation provides post-trauma employee counselling on events such as terrorist attacks and assaults on staff.
The company employs in-house telephone counsellors at its Glasgow and Milton Keynes offices as well as home-based emergency overnight counsellors. All counsellors work on a part-time shift basis.
A user of smartnumbers flexible working technology since 1997, ICAS approached smartnumbers with a view to improving the quality of its telephone-based service and making more effective use of home-based counsellors.
Solution
ICAS moved to the smartnumbers Virtual Contact Centre service in 2004.
The service provides intelligent call queuing and routing to voicemail, location independent working services and management information (MI) reporting.
In 2006, ICAS also signed up to the unique smartnumbers Voice Continuity service.
Results
smartnumbers enables ICAS to administer all office and home-based counsellors as a single resource - making it as easy to connect night-time callers with home-based specialists, as it is to connect day-time callers with office-based counsellors. When clients call, smartnumbers directs them to appropriate counsellors, providing ‘whisper announcements' to inform counsellors who is calling.
The service provides detailed stats on call volumes and abandoned calls giving ICAS all the information it needs to ensure future performance and quality are optimised. smartnumbers has also made it easier to recruit specialists as home-based counsellors who couldn't otherwise work with the company.
"smartnumbers is reliable, flexible and easy-to-use. As a hosted voice service, it also plays a key role in disaster planning. If telephony was lost at both offices, smartnumbers will ensure that callers can be routed through to home-based counsellors, ensuring business continuity."
Dawn Mellor, Manager, ICAS Telephone Counselling Centre