Case Study: Age Concern – Westminster

Challenges – To make volunteers and staff more available to its elderly clients

In Westminster the charity runs a number of initiatives to fulfil this objective including; information, advice and support from designated advice points, three activity day clubs and home services that include befriending, gardening and home visits to carry out odd jobs such as changing light bulbs etc. Furthermore the charity offers an escort service to its clients to accompany them to the dentist or doctors.

Their principal means of communication with all their clients, volunteers and staff is via the telephone, however their existing system at 14 years old was proving to be unreliable and difficult to maintain.  

Operations Manager at Age Concern Westminster, Alex Dalton explains the problem, “The age of the system was a factor, but the real catalyst for change was our desire to make all of our services, staff and volunteers more accessible to our elderly clients. To do this we wanted to integrate our voice and data systems into a new CRM system that would manage over 4,000 contacts including clients, volunteers, home service users and club members. For this to happen we needed to upgrade our entire IT and telephony system.”

He continues, “This presented us with two major challenges. Firstly as a charity our budget is limited, therefore accommodating all our technical wishes was potentially beyond our means. Secondly our clients are a different demographic from most organisations and typically are neither familiar nor comfortable with new technology. We therefore needed a system that could deliver all of our requirements, within budget and yet be ‘user friendly’ and accessible to our clients.”

The Solution – A unified communications solution from Swyx

Age Concern Westminster believed that any decision on new technology should involve the charity's internal users and equally important its external clients.  Dalton explains, ‘We wanted to be sure that any new investment met the needs of everyone who would use the new system; so feedback from our clients on the features and functionality that they would like to see from the system was vital to this process. Once this was completed we then drew up a statement of requirements which we put out to several potential suppliers including our existing incumbent.”

According to Dalton the proposal by Swyx partner Leading Edge Technology was by far the best, “It was clear that the SwyxWare solution would meet all our requirements, both for now and what we hoped to achieve in the future”

“However what really impressed us was Leading Edge's approach” says Dalton, “and how they thought outside the box, they took to time to evaluate how the new system would integrate into our existing operation and how our clients would use it. They recognised that that our issue was not about the technology it was about solving our communications and operational problems.”

What Swyx partner Leading Edge delivered to Age Concern?

• An unified IT and telephony  communication system based on SwyxWare at all their locations
• Connection to SIP exchange lines for reduced call costs
• The ability to incorporate a sophisticated contact management and CRM solution within their budgetary limits
• Remote access, so that staff can work from home and still be 'present' on the telephony system
• Options for adding other cost saving options such as SwyxMobile in the future
• On-going support, training and customisation

Results – Improved contact, lower costs and a communications platform that will evolve with the charity

The principal objective set out by Alex Dalton and his team was to make Age Concern Westminster a much more approachable organisation, where clients are able to contact the right person more often. Dalton comments, “It's early days and for us the technology is a major cultural change compared with the old system.  However, we believe we are well on the way to achieving our objectives. For example, our staff are more available to our clients even when they are roaming between clubs and shops.  They simply ring a single number which re-routes the call automatically dependent on location.”

Once the full integration is complete the charity will be able to know who is calling, Not only will this provide a more personalised service as they will be able to answer in the name of the caller e.g. “Hello Mrs Smith, how are you today?”, but they will also have other pertinent information such as any disabilities or special needs and who to contact in an emergency. This will 'pop up' on the screen of the receiver's computer or lap-top.

Dalton also likes Swyx's ability to customise the call routing, which again improves the charity's accessibility, “The scripting that SwyxWare offer is also very powerful. We can now programme the phones so that the call is always transferred to a member of our staff even if the initial person is not available. This makes our clients feel more ‘valued’ as they are no longer fobbed off with an answering machine asking them to leave a message”.

The organisation is also looking to use the new SwyxWare solution as a future means of developing additional revenue by hosting telephony services for other Age Concern agencies.

Dalton concludes, “We are very happy with both the SwyxWare solution and the support we have received from Leading Edge. Charities such as ourselves are not in a position to replace our systems every five years, we need longevity; as an integrated software solution this is exactly what Swyx delivers. We believe we now have an IT & communications platform that will develop and evolve with the business for the foreseeable future and beyond.”