Why getting out of hours service right is critical for the public sector.

Delivering effective and efficient customer services to end users who could potentially be in crisis, or a vulnerable situation should be a core part of the organisations operating model.

But in times of extreme pressures on budgets, it’s often a struggle to find the right model for the business to operate.  Delivering out of hours customer support is often costly, and finding a partner who has the right experience and expertise is the key to successful and consistent delivery of these services.

Here at ADEC Arise, our years of experience in supporting local government and regulatory bodies has given us a great insight into what service levels need to apply. 
We’ve put together our top tips to think about when procuring out of hours support for local authorities or housing associations:
 
1.    Ensuring the right planning happens upfront.

Agents need to be fully prepared and trained for the conversations they are about to have.  It’s not just having the right call script in place – conversations don’t always follow the same path!  Our focus is always on ensuring that our expert training team build the right process for training your outsourced team – working closely with your in-house specialists to transfer all that vital knowledge.  All before the service goes live, and then throughout the life of the relationship, ensuring that knowledge is kept up to date.  

2.    Putting in place the right escalation pathways.

Out of hours support is not just about answering the phone overnight.  Often, the people who call outside regular office hours will be in crisis or needing an urgent response.  In these circumstances it’s vitally important that you have done the work upfront to map out the escalation protocols for genuine emergency situations, or if the issue can be managed later, that the resident is reassured that it will be dealt with.  Having the right triage protocols in place is key.

3.    Providing the right cost model for the organisation.

Our work in government and regulatory services has shown to us the importance of being able to provide a variety of different and flexible models to meet requirements.  We have an in depth understanding of the need to be able to prove cost efficiency, balancing the need for reliable and highly trained staff to support residents, whilst also meeting the often difficult budget constraints. That’s why we can provide a range of flexible models to meet your requirements, at every budget.  Our global teams can support with offshore provision at the right cost points, whilst managed by our highly skilled and experienced Irish management team.  We can provide full on-shore, off-shore or a blended model of the two – whatever is needed to meet your objectives.  We appreciate offshoring can be perceived as scary – that’s why we’ve written a detailed white paper on how to get it right first time – you can download it here.

But offshoring isn’t always the best option – we’ll work with you to define the best balance of service levels, cost efficiency and SLA’s to ensure you meet all the requirements of your residents

If you would like a conversation about how ADEC Arise could help support your out of hours services in a cost effective way, please do get in touch.