Under pressure to deal with increased call volumes and prioritise urgent calls, they needed to immediately advise callers of how, when and where they could make contact with their sites.
Liberty Converse takes the strain
The Trust invested in the Liberty Converse speech bot to handle the internal calls and relieve pressure on the switchboard.
“Liberty Converse became as successful, if not more so, in answering and directing more calls from members of the public for the first time than we could have imagined. It was a very swift implementation, and now we are working to maximise the system and ensure that staff make full use of it on every internal call.”
Louise Simpson
Head of Telecommunications, Lancashire Teaching Hospitals
The solution
Concerned that their patients and external callers weren’t ready to interact with a speech bot, the Trust intended to use Liberty Converse only as an internal operator to relieve the switchboard. Covid put the Trust under pressure – reactions needed to be faster than usual. So, they deployed Converse to handle external calls as well, to reduce call waiting times and switchboard pressure.
Despite not having fully updated all their contact and bleep information, or educated hospital staff on using Converse, it immediately began successfully handling a large proportion of internal and external calls.
The Switchboard Team operated around-the-clock shifts, a busy team of 20 staff who handled a considerable volume of calls, including many internal calls between staff members.
Now, the team is upskilled and trained on other tasks, such as working within the IT helpdesk. Each site still has a night operator, but Converse reliably routes calls, so call volumes to the switchboard have significantly reduced. The operators now update on-call rotas and deal with database tasks between much less frequent switchboard calls.
Patients have adopted a bot as a ‘virtual operator’ very well. The Telecoms Team has worked to reduce granular details and pronunciation issues on the live system. Patient feedback and first-time resolution rates continue to improve.
Staff also utilise the system, seeing how reliable it is at routing calls, as they know it means less time on hold to the switchboard.
“I was unsure at first, but now I feel it has really helped. We now have only two members of staff required on shift but it’s less stressful.”
Switchboard operator
The result
The Converse installation was brought forward, going live within a week
A front-end greeting was applied immediately, advising callers about making contact
Reactions needed to be faster than normal due to Covid, so Converse was deployed to handle external calls as well as internal, to reduce call waiting times and switchboard pressure. Converse handled 53% of external calls in that initial month
Converse is so sophisticated, reliable and easy to use it immediately began handling a huge proportion of internal and external calls successfully – despite the Trust not having time to update all contact information fully or to educate staff (due to the rapid deployment)
In May 2020, the first month with Converse, Switchboard staff dealt with 4,000 internal calls and 34,000 external calls, compared to 27,000 internal calls and 64,000 external calls the previous May
Spending more time on what counts
The Trust aims to continue to populate the administration system with more information, contact details and bleep details, which will further improve the call handling and first time resolution that the bots can provide. Plus, the Trust is investigating adding an additional two bots to ensure they don’t hit thresholds in busy periods. Ensuring that staff can make full use of Converse means that the Switchboard Team can help callers with complex enquiries and to work on other administration tasks.
Impact
1 Week
implementation
85%
fewer internal calls to switchboard
53%
external calls directed by speechbot in first month
Delight your patients
Here’s how you can handle internal and external calls and relieve pressure on the switchboard
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