Telephonetics VIP Contact Centre improves departmental call handling at NHS Lothian

21st October 2008, Hemel Hempstead - Telephonetics VIP, the speech automation and voice recognition specialist, is pleased to announce a new contract win for its Contact Centre solution with NHS Lothian. The solution will be used by multiple NHS Lothian departments, each with very individual requirements for call handling, to improve the service provided to callers. 

NHS Lothian has already successfully implemented the Telephonetics VIP ContactPortal and Result solutions (for internal operator services and automated medical results provision) and is now employing Telephonetics VIP for help in improving the service offered to callers in Staff Bank, eHealth (IT), Patient Appointment Booking Service, Poisons Information Service and the  Estates Help Desk. The Telephonetics VIP Contact Centre solution has been selected for its flexibility to address the telephone call handling challenges of, initially, these 5 quite different NHS Lothian services.

These departments will all use the Contact Centre solution for their main business calls. Each department has problems with missed and busy calls and the contact centre will be used to eradicate these issues. The flexible skill sets and call queuing technology offered by Contact Centre are a welcome addition for staff, as is the ability to run reports to see where improvements need to be made.

The Contact Centre solution will be used to:

 - Route calls to the most appropriate skilled agents regardless of location
 - Manage call distribution evenly and spread work loads across multiple call handling locations ensuring all calls are answered
 - Allow multi-location departments to issue a single phone number for callers
 - Automate simple call request without the need for human intervention (such as information pack requests and password resets)
 - Provide detailed reporting information to aid rota / shift planning

Alan Hush, Head of Voice Services, NHS Lothian said:

“The Telephonetics VIP Contact Centre solution will greatly improve the NHS Lothian’s call handling in several areas. Furthermore, we already have ideas to expand on the initial service in the future by offering Contact Centre Services to our HR Department, our Patient Liaison Officers, Midwifery Service and our Out-of-Hours Unscheduled Care Service in order to improve the varied call handling requirements of these departments. The flexibility of Telephonetics VIP Contact Centre enables us to meet the very different needs of these individual departments, thereby improving customer service.”

Mark Holmes, Director of Sales, Telephonetics VIP commented:

“The provision of our Contact Centre solution to NHS Lothian is an important contract win for Telephonetics VIP, highlighting the cross-selling opportunities available in the NHS, both in terms of the products we provide and the number of departments that benefit from our solutions. Telephonetics VIP looks forward to working even more closely with NHS Lothian to improve the service provided to all its callers.”