Bringing a contact centre to support clients can be difficult in the best of times.
Usually, people who resort to contacting are often frustrated that they have an issue with their service or product they need help on.
Therefore, removing any additional things that would add to the annoyance, like chats dropping out of connection, is vital.
This is all the more important when the people contacting you are seeking help for a mental health crisis.
That’s why when Mersey Care NHS Foundation Trust (Mersey Care) wanted to transform its CCaaS solutions, it saw Webex as one of the partners that could help deliver that service.
Mersey Care’s Capabilities
Mersey Care is one of the largest providers of physical and mental health services in North West England.
It serves more than 1.4 million people across over 200 sites throughout the region.
As part of this ‘striving for perfect care’ initiative, Mersey Care wanted to develop a dedicated 24/7 urgent mental health crisis helpline to support communities throughout Merseyside.
This planned transformation began in 2020 ahead of schedule to help with the growing mental health issues the Covid lockdowns induced.
The expedited need was further exacerbated by Mersey Care’s existing technology, which did not allow clinicians to meet the needs of key NHS directives operationally.
For instance, the one-hour / four-hour response directive, part of NHS England’s urgent and emergency care recovery plan, is the ambition to improve 76% of patients being admitted, transferred, or discharged within four hours.
Equally, other issues revolved around diversion from Accident and Emergency Services or the pending increased volume forecasted by the delivery of the National NHS111 (Press 2 for Mental Health) pathway.
The technology platform they needed therefore required greater resilience, multi-channels and flexibility to support a generative AI technology approach to reduce risk and improve the service user experience by improving staff capabilities.
The Webex Edge
Mersey Care partnered with digital consultancy ITGL to help them develop the crisis helpline for the future.
Together, they worked to apply the latest innovations in technology continuously over their work together. The project is now entering its fourth year.
During this time, the ITGL team worked with Mersey Care to design and implement a Cisco Webex Contact Center solution, completing the migration to the cloud-based platform in November 2022.
With Webex, they were able to implement
- Call routing capabilities enable urgent calls to be prioritised over lower acuity calls
- Utilising text-to-speech features for quicker updating of recorded messages
- A dedicated Emergency Services line to provide a direct line to those in the field
- Real-time and historical data and reports accessed within the Webex Contact Center Analyzer
Equally, they were able to utilise the capabilities of the Webex platform to embed web pages that use the technology of the what3words geo-locator application, helping emergency services locate 114 people for rescue up until September 2024.
But perhaps most importantly, the trust now had a flexible, future-proof solution upon which they could continue to build.
Calabrio’s Integration with Webex
By October 2023, ITGL sought to augment Mersey Care’s solution further and thus integrated Calabrio into the CCaaS service as part of Cisco Webex Workforce Optimization (WFO).
This addition enabled the trust to respond more quickly, provide the correct care, and safeguard the wellbeing of clinicians so that they can continue to deliver this critical service to the highest standard.
WFO, integrated into the Webex Contact Center platform, is a comprehensive suite of tools designed to enhance contact centre operations and improve customer service delivery.
The suite includes features such as call analytics, sentiment analysis, and performance monitoring, enabling organisations to gain deeper insights into their operations and make data-driven decisions.
By providing enhanced visibility and detailed insights on actions taken on the platform, it enabled more efficient service delivery and improved staff support.
For instance, at Mersey Care, Webex WFO helped them identify that only 21% of contacts handled by clinicians are ‘clinical’.
This, combined with optimised call routing, helped them direct critical cases to appropriate clinicians promptly and free up clinicians from otherwise dealing with a non-clinical who an agent could otherwise handle.
The system’s ability to automatically summarise calls, provide transcriptions, and generate 150-word summaries within 10 minutes also reduced after-call work, freeing operators to interact with callers.
Additionally, analytics identify repeat caller patterns (currently 15.3% of contacts) and highlight staff at risk of burnout, enabling targeted interventions and improved resource allocation.
When compiled, these efficiencies led to thousands of hours being reinvested into the service, enhancing patient outcomes and staff wellbeing while shaping more effective training programs.
An Improved Outcome for All
When Mersey Care needed to fast-track the launch of its 24/7 urgent Mental Health Crisis Helpline during the Covid pandemic, it realised its existing technology simply couldn’t keep up with the demand.
Together with ITGL, Calabrio, and Cisco Webex Contact Center, Mersey Care implemented a solution that meets NHS directives, improves patient care outcomes, and safeguards contact centre operators and clinicians.
With 50 clinicians leaving the NHS annually and 6,728 hours spent on induction and training, this translates to more significant savings down the line.
Something that is especially important as the project has grown.
The crisis line project, which saw 3,500 uses a month in 2020, now has 500,000 more people known to be using the service, with an average of 14,000 contacts per month.
Therefore, its ability to evolve and adapt, with integrations like Calabrio into Webex’s WFO, has proved pivotal.
As the UK and, indeed, much of the world is reportedly in the throes of a mental health pandemic, solutions like Webex’s WFO may no longer be an added improvement but a needed solution.
