Episode 07 – How technology is transforming NHS call centres

Podcast Guest Introductions

Charlotte
Hi, and welcome to our latest podcast episode. I’m Charlotte, the host today.

And today we’re going to be talking about NHS call centres, which is quite an unusual topic, not one I’ve done before.

And I’m really interested to see what we’re going to be talking about today. But first of all, I’d love my guests to introduce themselves. Would you like to go first?

Joseph Pratten
Sure. Thank you very much for having me on. So I’m Joe Pratten, and I work for Cisco, and we’re the provider of the technology that goes into these call centres. I’ve got about fifteen years in the industry, and I guess my real focus is how can we as technology organisations help the NHS to transform and ultimately have better outcomes for patients.

Charlotte
Nice. Thank you. Elena?

Elena Pudge
I’m Elena Pudge. I’m a collaboration practice lead. So we work as a partner with Cisco as a vendor.

And obviously, from my perspective, I go from, in the past, implementing the solutions to now sort of more managing it on a slightly different

Charlotte
So you’ve been at the coalface, so I think you’re gonna have some good stories today.

Elena Pudge
I hope so.

Charlotte
Jason?

Jason Newbury-Smith
So, I’m Jason Newbury Smith.

I’m a business development director, and I’ve been working in the industry a little over the fifteen years that Joe has. But I work into the NHS for a lot of these solutions. Hopefully be able to bring some stories along as well.

Charlotte
Nice. Now, because it is an unusual topic, It would be really great, and Jason, this could probably sit with you, if you could paint a bit of a picture for the people watching the podcast as to what does a typical day, if a typical day exists, look like in an NHS call centre? And how is it different to what most people would expect, even other people that work in call centres?

Jason Newbury-Smith
So there probably isn’t a typical day within the NHS. And there are a lot of different types of contact centres within the NHS. So you’ll find that you get the normal type of things with IT help desks, but you’re going to have things like appointment bookings, you can have inter NHS contact centres with GPs coming in for referrals, patients for pre and post care.

The obvious one that everybody knows is nine ninety nine contact centres, mental health crisis lines.

So each of those has a very different model around it.

But you’ll find that, again, within the NHS it’s very different to commercial space, so you don’t have the same metrics people are going to be looking at. You’re to have clinicians who are working in the contact centre and they’re going to be measured on making sure that the patient is looked after and that they get the right health, so that’s where it becomes very difficult to say there’s a normal day, because anybody can phone up and they could have any kind of problem, and it’s just dealing with those. Very, very different to a normal contact centre.

Joseph Pratten
Sorry, I was gonna say just to zone in on one area is the fact that in a normal commercial organisation, you would have very clear teams like sales, customer services, that is where the contact centre normally would reside. Whereas in NHS hospitals, you get lots of pockets of very small, what we might class as informal contact centres.

But they are still daily speaking to patients, clinicians, and doing their job of a contact centre, but just in much smaller environment.

Elena Pudge
Yeah. And actually, maybe to add to that well, both of those a little bit, the people that are answering those calls, that might not be what they do every day. Mhmm. Yeah. So they might be doing that for a couple of days a week, but then they go off and they do because they are medically trained professionals that’s not necessarily their day job. They come back to it having done home visits or something else that sits within their area and I think that actually influences how that contact centre has to run-in a way because that’s where it comes into it. It has to be simple, it has to be easy because they don’t do it every day.

Because they have to come back to So they come in

Charlotte
and pick it

Elena Pudge
up quickly.

It has to be very simple.

Jason Newbury-Smith
Yeah, and I think it’s a really interesting point that when you’re working into the NHS, normally within contact centres you talk about agents.

It’s very clear that they all say, We are not agents, we are clinicians. And probably, I don’t know, seventy, eighty percent of the people doing contact centres within the NHS are that medically trained nurses, clinicians, doctors, whatever it might be. So it’s a very different dynamic to anywhere else.

Charlotte
Yeah, I can imagine quite unique. And I know you’ve worked in this environment for quite a few years.

What kind of initially drew you to it? Because it’s a very niche sort of area, isn’t it?

Jason Newbury-Smith
Yeah.

It’s one of those things. I think when you do a job, you always want to make something better, do something, and have an impact on the world.

This is one of those areas where you can do that.

Within IT, sales, within technical aspects, great. You can go and you can sell some hardware, can sell some software, you can come up with a solution that will make the lives of those individuals easier to do their job.

But in this environment, you actually make a difference on their lives. You can be the difference between a positive outcome and a negative outcome, and for me that’s massive, and that was one of the reasons why we get involved with it.

Me and the group that kind of work within this area, we have two goals. If we’re going to do something, the outcome needs to be a better operational experience for the NHS, or it needs to be patient outcome. It needs to be positive.

Interesting.

Charlotte
So we always hear about NHS pressures, so sticking to that human element that you were just talking about.

What do those pressures actually look like day to day for the people in that call center? So what do you see out there?

Joseph Pratten
Yeah, sure. In every single contact center and every single NHS trust will be slightly different. But if you think about the demand, particularly in the winter time when we see the peaks in the NHS, you might have a service that just doesn’t have enough appointments. And also you’ve got people that maybe wanna ring up to cancel their appointment or move their appointment, but they can’t get through because there are so many people trying to get through and book those appointments that you then get the really negative outcome, which is a do not attend appointment because they couldn’t actually cancel their appointment.

So ultimately, the saying of do more with less is prevalent across the NHS, but also in local government as well. And I just think it’s you know, the NHS is a really amazing place, I think we’re trying to understand if you’ve got money to invest at the moment in the NHS, what’s gonna give you and the patients the most return and the most bang for your buck? Is it in training? Is it in clinical advancements, particularly with AI and things like that?

Is it around communications and patient engagement? There’s so many different areas. I think it’s our job as technology specialists to help those NHS trusts to understand where can you get that bank of your buck. But again, pressure is pressure, right?

And it’s very hard to summarise it, but ultimately, the stuff coming in, it’s very hard to process it and get out of the door.

Charlotte
Yeah. And what have you seen in reality in terms of the staff coping with this call volume increase?

Elena Pudge
Think it is unlike other sectors, where you’ve to look at it a bit more of the use cases and forget the technology for a moment, is to actually look at where they’re struggling. Is it because of the call volumes? Is it because actually you know, when we talk about the mental health crisis line potentially, the calls are really long. Use cases and the service they’re providing is not the same as any other sector where actually the calls might last five, ten minutes and it’s the quickly you provide the information, the better.

These calls are long. They need to stay long. It’s not about reducing that necessarily. Actually what it’s about is maybe giving those clinicians the tools to concentrate on that call so they don’t have to take maybe notes.

Or it’s actually giving them tools after that call they don’t have to spend forty five minutes writing those notes up and they can have a collaboration tool that summarises it for them that they will check and make sure it’s correct and they can modify and add to. But it reduces that time post call to do something about it. So you have to look at specific use cases to see where technology can fit in. And I think you also have to remember that the calls that some of these people will deal with will be hard on both sides.

It’s people ringing for help, it’s also people that are helping them. You know, the clinicians sit in this side of it.

It’s not always gonna be an easy conversation of go, oh, yes. That’s where the parking is. That’s our opening hours. It’s a very different type of conversation. So you have to remember the clinicians as well in this Yeah. And sort of look at it. But, of course, I’m sure everybody will agree that you’ve got to add on top of it from the admin and the operations and sort of the IT side of it.

Going back to cost reductions, how do we run it more efficiently from that perspective? How do we report on it better? So it’s probably similar challenges to other sectors, but you have to look at them in a slightly different way almost in what you get.

Jason Newbury-Smith
Yeah, and those pressures can change on a daily basis. Something that happens on a particular day can have a massive impact on the NHS.

One of the stories that we look back on was when the Queen sadly passed. There was such an uptick within mental health, and the call, people weren’t expecting that.

Charlotte
Really?

Jason Newbury-Smith
Wow. Gosh.

Nobody worked it out straight away, and so over those first few days there was an influx.

Because of what we’re doing and being able to report on it and understand and look at trends, when there’s a derby match, the Manchester derbies, that has a knock on impact on what happens within the NHS, whether that be from a mental health point of view or from unfortunately A and E and those kinds of things. So people are starting to be able to understand where some of these pressures are going to come from, but it isn’t going to be everything. As Ellen has said, it’s difficult calls, and so it’s managing those individuals and making sure that they’re given the help and the support to be able to cope. If we can bring technology to the front to be able to take some of the easier, less complex elements away from them and help it means they’ve got more time to spend with those patients, but also the additional time that they might need to recover and decompress from it.

Joseph Pratten
It’s a really good point, and just to add to that, is this notion of NHS contact centres, they need to be so dynamic. They could have their day planned out perfectly, and then they turn on the news in the morning and they see the BBC are doing a big thing about a doctor strike, or Martin Lewis is providing some advice about something that is really good, but that could cause hundreds and hundreds more people to contact their clinician, contact whatever government agency it is. I mean, if you take local government as another example, if Martin Lewis comes out and says you should regrade your council tax, that causes a huge spike.

So one thing that we can do as a technology organisation is give those organisations the tools that they can change things very quickly, whether that’s dropping in an announcement that says, if you’re calling up about your doctor’s appointment, if you haven’t been notified, please assume it’s on. That can hopefully what we call deflect the simple routine questions. That area of being super dynamic is very prevalent in NHS particularly.

Charlotte
Because burnout’s a big issue, isn’t it, in the NHS? I’ve read articles about that and related to what you were talking about, some of the calls being difficult. It’s not just about volume, but it’s about, okay, what are they actually having to deal with and getting those people into patient pathways, for example, quickly.

So when you’re implementing the technology in these environments, is there a most common concern from clinical staff, the ones that will actually be using it? Where do they normally focus there? You said about adapting it to the clinical teams. What do they normally ask?

Elena Pudge
Well, I think the first thing they can ask is how difficult is it to use?

Charlotte
So it comes back to your

Elena Pudge
earlier It has to be simple, it has to be easy because actually when you’re talking about a new system that’s coming on and then training them, it’s time for those clinicians to take out of their very busy, very important day job to then go and sit on some sort of training course or whatever it is that they model so that they get used to it.

Right. It has to be fairly quick.

It has to be, you have to provide them sort of materials that they can then consume maybe at their own pace, But also, just in general, if they’ve not worked on it for a week because they’ve been doing home visits, they need to be able to come back to it. Mhmm. And then just be able to go, yeah, this is what I do. I can remember all of it. It’s not a problem. So actually, I think the time and the use of use is quite important.

Talking about burnout, which comes back to it a little bit, yes, it’s technology to monitor but it’s actually more about you giving the supervisor some sort of tools or ability to see who’s been having those calls in a simple visual graphical way. Obviously a lot of these people will be based in the same buildings or the same offices so they can see who they work with and physically what state they’re potentially in. But actually providing the technology that can run through the reports to go, okay, do you know what, these five people have had some really long calls today, these are the key words that have been mentioned and they have been on those calls for an x number of hours, minutes. And that then gives the supervisor a bit of that visibility to go, okay, need to go and make sure that they’re okay. Need to go and check. Nice, I like And given that sort of manual intervention before we get into what the automation and AI side of it can do.

Charlotte
I suppose some people don’t open up easily anyway to admit that they are struggling, so to have that ability to be proactive and do a welfare check on them. Exactly.

Jason Newbury-Smith
It’s about their welfare, but again, it comes back to patient safety as well. So if an individual is starting to feel the pressure, is having that burnout, they’re not going to want to be working, so you see an uptick in sick days that come You can see poor decision making, which is obviously a fundamental issue. You can’t have that in those kinds of situations. So they really need to manage it, not only for the clinician, but for end patient safety as well.

Joseph Pratten
And just on the subject of burnout, the worst case scenario with burnout is you have an amazing advisor. Maybe they’ve been working on a crisis line for many years, they’ve got loads of experience, they go, Do you know what? I’ve had enough of this. I’m gonna go and work in a place that I don’t have to deal with these of calls.

So if we can do anything to reduce churn, because not only are you losing some amazing skills, you then have to bring this new person in which costs recruitment money, training money. So if we can look at burnout and Cisco did a big piece of research a couple of years, it wasn’t on the NHS, it was just in contact centres in general. And they did a really interesting word cloud with all the people that they’re interviewing. They was talking why do people leave and the negative sides of contact center and stress and burnout were the two biggest words that came up in that.

And that’s what spurred the organisation to create a functionality or a feature within the product, which is exactly what Eleanor was mentioning there. It’s it’s automated stress detection. So we know that Joe might have had three appointment changes this morning, whereas Eleanor’s had to deal with three suicides.

You know, that would then automatically go, right, we’re gonna keep an eye on Eleanor now. And if she was seeming burnt out, it would put her on a mini rest break and alert the supervisor to say, look, maybe you wanna take Eleanor for a coffee or something this morning. So, yeah, it’s you know, it’s not nothing’s perfect.

Charlotte
I love that.

Joseph Pratten
But if you can try and get in front of it a little bit more, it’s really cool.

Charlotte

Definitely. Oh, I love that. So have you got some examples of when you’ve gone into these environments and you’ve seen a scenario of burnout or stress or just huge volumes that they’re trying to balance and deal with?

Can you maybe talk us through what it was like when you got there, and then what differences you were able to make to those people in that environment?

Joseph Pratten
Was going to say, I think the crisis lines probably weren’t the best So

Jason Newbury-Smith
Interestingly, one of the main projects that we got involved with was a crisis line, so very serious situations arise on this.

And they were using really basic phone system. It wasn’t able to do the reporting or any of that, so they weren’t able to monitor what was happening. They were just seeing a little bit of churn that was coming in, people being a little dejected and not being able to cope, and they weren’t getting great feedback from patients because they weren’t getting the service they really needed.

All of these things are very negative. Now it’s such a big area, you can’t just go and implement everything. It takes time and you’ve got to work your way through it. It was almost a like for like replacement into a better technology, so the ability for a patient to be able to come in, make a call, get hold of someone and talk to them, and then you start to add on and you layer on the processes, so the reporting. You started then looking at the monitoring of the call so you can get a bit of sentiment analysis, Although sentiment analysis isn’t great in that scenario because it’s highly emotional calls going on. There’s a lot happening and you’re never going to see the smiley face going to the negative or vice versa.

It just doesn’t quite work, but you can still see the emotions within those calls. You then start to layer on top of that things like transcription so that you’re taking away the burden of what actually happens within that call. So if a call’s four hours, it could take four hours to then write it up. That’s a lot of time and stress and energy that was not being wasted, but could have been better done.

That transcription providing a summary at the back end of it, being able to quickly and efficiently put that in, get back onto having more calls, reviewing the calls, looking for key words, so again to spot that burnout. If there are overdose, suicide mentioned, it flags up, people can review it, can look at it. Do we need to follow-up with the patient? Do we need to follow-up with the clinician to see what’s happening?

So all of these things kind of come together, and then you start adding in tools. So we’ve used what, three words, for example, to be able to go and locate an individual who is in severe distress.

Charlotte
So that’s where you define three words, I’d say like is every square meter or two square meters?

Joseph Pratten
Every three, I think it’s three meters square.

Charlotte
Is it three meters square?

It has a, just for people who don’t know, it has a three word reference all across the globe, isn’t

Jason Newbury-Smith
In that instance, so we’ve had it where this particular organisation has said that over the last twelve months there have been one hundred and fifty nine instances where they’ve been able to use that tool of what, three words, to be able to go and find that individual who was in true crisis.

And that could be the difference between a very bad outcome and a positive outcome. So all of these things being layered on make a massive difference, and that’s where we start to see the improvements to the service.

We have got some stats around what that has done for them.

Joseph Pratten
Jason, just to almost call out a question for you is what’s really nice about that What3words example is the fact it’s so simple for the clinician to use.

The work that these guys have done to implement the integration into the agent desktop, it’s a couple of clicks And then the patient receives the message on their phone, they can read it back out or send a message back.

Thing I like about it is such a big impact for such a small piece of functionality.

Charlotte
Yeah. I love that.

So in a scenario like that, because I think, as you said, ultimately, you’re technologists that work in this field. So where do you start when you go into a trust or a call center or whatever environment it is?

What are the first questions you ask? Because I guess you were saying that use case probably came out through some sort of discovery. So where do you start when you go into?

Joseph Pratten
I think it really depends on who you’re talking to. Often we will maybe go in and start with IT and it’s what keeps you awake at night. It’s that kind of age old, I guess it’s a sales qualification question. But we just want to understand what is the frustration?

Is it the fact that all of your equipment that runs this technology, is it housed on premise and you have to water it and feed it and look after it? Or is it bits of functionality that the trust keep on coming to you asking for? And maybe your solution can do it, but it’s just too heavy lifting to turn these things on. So from an operational perspective, that’s the kind of question that we would go down.

From the actual contact center side, what would you say?

Elena Pudge
Well, I think it’s having the clinician or somebody from that side being involved in defining and us understanding what is it that they need the system to do. Because even if you’re replacing something they already had, it doesn’t mean that what they had actually served their needs. You’ve got to remember, it’s an evolving project. It isn’t something we went and went, Right, we’re going deliver this in next three months.

All of this technology, I want

Charlotte
to have Ish Bosht, done.

Elena Pudge
Enjoy.

Is something that we stay involved. It is not a single project. It is an ongoing project. It is an ongoing project that will be over three years.

Hopefully, it will keep going and keep being transformed. And you have to almost constantly be revising what you’ve already put in as well to because things change. Mhmm. Teams will slightly change.

New directives from, you know, up above will come and go, actually, we need you to do this or we need you to report on this. Yeah. And you have to basically just constantly be working and going, right. Okay.

Well, this is what we’ve got. How do we adopt it? And once we’re at a good place, right. What’s the next step that we can add to it?

And it you think will help you with your day job or with the cases that you’ve seen. Hopefully, using some of the tools that have been implemented, like analytics, to go, where are you seeing the peaks, troughs? Where are you seeing maybe some more demand? Is it seasonal?

Is it time of day? And you’ve got to remember, these are 24/7 operations as well. So you’ve got to look at it all.

Joseph Pratten
And they don’t know what they don’t know.

Charlotte
That’s what I was just going to say. Because it must be like peeling back the layers of an onion, mustn’t it? Because the more they use it and they understand what’s possible, the more they want, the more they suddenly come up with some random use case.

Elena Pudge
And sometimes they’ll go, this is how we want to implement it. You go, that’s great. Let’s do it. And then six months later they go, actually, that’s not what we wanted. It’s not quite doing what we thought it would do for us.

And it’s that it’s being able to

Charlotte
adapt to mean, the flexibility.

It’s the flexibility.

Joseph Pratten
Yeah. That’s the nice thing about modern technology. Back in the day, would have had to have got a team of engineers, lock themselves in a room, blue screens. Nowadays, we can train, it wouldn’t just be IT operations people to make these changes, we can train the operational contact center teams to make these changes, which I think is so powerful and also empowers them to take control of their patient experience.

Jason Newbury-Smith
Yeah, definitely. And just going back to the original piece, these kinds of projects really do need to be true partnerships.

If you don’t have people from all across the business, it doesn’t work. You have to have the clinicians, you have to have buy in from above, you do have to have IT.

And if you can get all of those people working together over a period of time, we can bring ideas of what can happen. The clinicians will go, this is what I’d love to be able to deliver for a patient.

And we then work out how you do it. You can’t have, we do this day in, day out, this is what it is, just give us that. Because you’re never going to evolve, you’re never going to get anywhere and you’re not going to be able to do more for the same, which is what everyone is driving for nowadays, right?

Charlotte
Less even, I think. Well, yeah.

And because what you don’t want to do is cause a problem for someone else in a different team because of a change that’s made over here. So the elephant in the room always, would imagine, is cost because obviously the NHS is always struggling for budgets and money and what have you.

Have you got an example of a situation where you’ve had to get really creative because there was the wish list, there was the budget, there was a big discrepancy between the

Elena Pudge
That one’s definitely for you.

Jason Newbury-Smith
So let’s be fair, the NHS have always had that issue with finance and funding.

We’re regularly having to be creative around how we can do things.

And this is where you start looking at how you actually implement it, and you can’t go for a big bang, you have to start to implement slowly and build up and find the fact that you’re starting to get benefits and getting reduced costs in different areas, so that you can prove the technology then grow it and grow it and grow it, there are different things that we look at doing around the way that we structure it, the fact that we can look at using overage. So you start with a small contact center with a small number of users and that’s your base cost. We know what the overage charges are going to be for bringing in more agents when there’s an overflow, an influx of calls, and you build it and you build it and you do it that way. So there’s lots of ways that we can look to structure that, but at the end of the day it comes back to being able to find the right solution that delivers the outcomes, provides operational benefits, and then more money becomes available.

There’s a lot of stuff that you can’t do any conversation nowadays like bringing AI in.

Charlotte
Oh, that old chestnut.

Jason Newbury-Smith
Let’s bring that

Elena Pudge
one in.

Charlotte
Actually, that’s the real elephant in the room,

Elena Pudge
isn’t it?

Jason Newbury-Smith
Yeah, it is. Outside of the fact that AI has been around for donkeys years, just called different things, that’s where we can really start to show some value and show that you can take some of the easier tasks, the repetitive tasks, the where do I park, what time do I need to be there, rescheduling of appointments, that can be moved into AI, can be automated, people can get access online.

Charlotte
Like chatbots or something like Chatbots,

Jason Newbury-Smith
SMS, WhatsApp, can still be phone.

Voice is still a critical element to all of this. There’s population that won’t use anything else, need to have that, so we’ve got to be inclusive.

You can bring all of those in, all of a sudden, yes, there’s a cost to that, but actually you’re freeing up your staff to be able to do the more critical calls. You’re allowing them brain space, you’re allowing them to take on the additional burden that is currently hitting the country.

And that’s again where we start looking at the value and different costs.

Elena Pudge
Although at that point you’ve got to balance it with if they’re now not having any of these conversations anymore, only having the really difficult ones, actually you come back to that age and well-being and making sure that well now if actually most of the conversations are going be about the really difficult or important or, you know, ones that they really have to concentrate on rather than just the simple question of, oh, could you just resend me this guide? Yes. Yeah. Then you actually making sure that they’re okay becomes that much more important. Yeah. Yeah.

So having that in place for when you start to making some of those additional changes, I think that’s probably a

Joseph Pratten
And I think it’s our job to try and help trust draw the line between technology and the return and helping them see how we get to it.

Just to give an example. And again, I’d love to say it’s AI, but it’s just a simple set of SMSs. There was a trust in London that wanted to improve colonoscopy attendance. So two things, they wanted to have less do not attend, so people cancelling last minute or not showing up, but also patients having a more successful colonoscopy. Sorry, it’s not the nicest subject to talk about after lunch.

Charlotte
Do feel slightly uncomfortable.

Joseph Pratten
But what they noticed is that you had to prepare your bowel for that procedure. And it was all around not eating certain things and introducing other things to your diet.

Charlotte
And you have to have a powder or something, don’t you?

Joseph Pratten
Yeah.

There’s certain things that

Jason Newbury-Smith
you need

Joseph Pratten
to do beforehand.

What we did was we worked with them to send out seven very targeted messages before the appointment. So it wasn’t just your appointment’s tomorrow, please show up. It was seven really well written messages that helped them basically have a much better experience. The outcome of that was a I a nineteen, twenty percent reduction in failed colonoscopies. Now when you spread that across a trust or you just spread that across UK wide, there could be a really huge return on that. But again, it all started from a technology platform that could send well timed text messages. Yeah.

Charlotte
It’s amazing, isn’t it, for human beings? Think what an impact just knowing information in advance has on any experience. I remember Rory Sutherland from Ogilvy always talks about the single biggest thing that led to the biggest jump in customer satisfaction on the London Underground was those digital screens on the platforms.

Joseph Pratten
I saw that TikTok the other day.

Elena Pudge
Did you? Did you? It’s brilliant. It’s great.

And it’s

Joseph Pratten
all about what you know?

And the same with Uber’s, gave the same example.

It’s not about reducing the wait time, it’s about giving visibility and not having that panic of that

Charlotte
wait because people, if they know what to expect, they’re much happier,

Jason Newbury-Smith
aren’t they?

Elena Pudge
Absolutely.

Jason Newbury-Smith
And that comes back to the whole outbound contact centre. So from scheduling, I know we were talking about colonoscopy.

Charlotte
Let’s talk about that

Elena Pudge
some more,

Charlotte
shall we?

Joseph Pratten
But if

Jason Newbury-Smith
you look at appointments in general, or if you look at vaccinations and things like that, one of the things that research is showing is people want to have consistency, they want to understand where it’s come from.

There is so much in cyber attacks at the moment that people worry, is this genuine, is it not? And you’ll have patients phoning up and saying, I’ve had this message, is it actually from you? Because they’re not sure. And they’d had a message two days before. And that comes back to lots of different systems within the NHS not talking to each other.

So this kind of technology can bring everything together, start to have a single messaging, so that outbound contact center element, where you can have consistent messaging.

Internal staff know that is a message that’s coming from

Charlotte
They’re aware of what’s going out.

Jason Newbury-Smith
Yeah, someone phones in, is that for you? Yes, it’s absolutely for us. If it’s got this information, that’s genuine. And if you have that and all of that information goes out, people get used to it, they understand it, and they can choose how they want to receive it.

Again, going back to the web chats, SMS, WhatsApp, email, phone call, whatever it might be, you get their preferences and you can work through it. So by doing that, you can reduce the burden on people. You can make sure that you’re reducing the amount of do not attends. And there’s been research done which shows that by doing this, you can reduce it by thirty to thirty five percent.

Charlotte
Wow, so quite significant.

Jason Newbury-Smith
Massive in the NHS. Talk about the burden on these people and within clinics and things, well if you can reduce that thirty five percent to when people are sat there twiddling their thumbs because someone’s not showing up, that’s huge.

Charlotte
Yeah, definitely.

I think you touched on this earlier, Eleanor, have there been situations where something, a solution looked really good on paper, but didn’t actually work, didn’t deliver what they hoped it would deliver in real life? Well, obviously none of our solutions.

Well,

Joseph Pratten
of course.

Yeah.

Charlotte
An unexpected outcome, I guess, is probably what I’m referring to.

Jason Newbury-Smith
I can bail you out on this.

Elena Pudge
Oh, go on. Because all I can think of is sort of small changes and sort of adoptions and sort of just from maybe the operational, but you’re thinking of something specific, aren’t you?

Jason Newbury-Smith
Yeah. So we’ve seen it. It wasn’t really a failure, but there were some really good aspirations of what wanted to happen within this contact center, and IT were brought in, clinicians were brought in, and that was great, and we designed it out, but we couldn’t implement it because nobody had got internal governance And so until they’ve got involved, they’ve understood the security GDPR, so we’ve got to make sure we’re protecting patients’ information, there’s nothing that can be leaked out. All of that security element, nobody had looked at and gone, We have to go through this process. Now, we design systems that are inherently secure. That’s the basis from where we start. So we were fine with it, but it probably took an extra two, three months, maybe longer, to get through all of that process, so there was a delay to the start.

So it wasn’t a failure as such, but it was a longer implementation time because we had to then go back through the It’s

Joseph Pratten
a challenge of selling anything into the NHS, isn’t it? Those extra layers of governance that we all have to go through and the clinical safety officers that we have to make sure they’re happy with what we’re proposing, but

Jason Newbury-Smith
yeah, it’s a

Joseph Pratten
good one to call out sure.

Jason Newbury-Smith
I know it’s slightly outside of the contact center, but medical science, they want to know anything that’s going in that could be anywhere near a patient. These are things that we’re aware of now, and you just have to manage that and you have to build that and it’s part of the project. When you’re setting up those projects, governance at the beginning is, okay, who sits in from this team? Who sits in from that team?

And sometimes we’re driving NHS to say,

Charlotte
Don’t forget to think about that because that could derail it if you And I

Joseph Pratten
think that’s where we’re trying to be really targeted in, we’re not trying to implement technology to get involved in a patient pathway or make a clinical decision based on an AI chatbot.

We’re trying to deal with the stuff around the outside like you called out before, where do I park? How many dads have gone to the maternity ward panicking? Whereas imagine if when someone who’s in labour rings up and says, having a baby. And then once they’ve gone through that call, the system automatically sends them a text message saying, we’ve booked you a parking space in bay four.

Please click on this link. It will send you a what, three words to your phone directly. All of those just making that patient journey a bit simpler. That’s all possible now.

And I think that’s the exciting side of AI of I’m due for a leg operation. Now I don’t just get a reminder that says it’s tomorrow. I can ask questions about what might be the average recovery time or will I get Wi Fi in my room? How many visitors am I allowed?

We can respond to all of those things, whereas previously that would have tied up a clinician or the patient would have gone, I don’t know, and been annoyed about it.

Elena Pudge
Yes. And actually, I suppose we’ve to remember that we talk about pressures on their chest because, you know, we have an aging population, so that, you know, things are getting busy from that perspective. But actually, we also have younger generations. They don’t wanna necessarily phone up. No.

They’re

Charlotte
allergic to the phone.

Elena Pudge
They don’t know that the phone is there for phone calls. It is there for messages, WhatsApp, whatever digital way of doing it. And I am sometimes guilty of that as sometimes if I need to book an appointment to do something, if I have an option to send a WhatsApp message to do it online, I would rather that And just make up on the phone. Yeah. Because actually faster.

Well, it’s faster, but also it means that I am also doing something else probably at the same Yeah.

Charlotte
So And you can do it any time of day as well,

Elena Pudge
can’t Yeah.

Exactly. So so it is that flexibility for the external, for the service users as well. Mhmm.

Joseph Pratten
And if you open up those channels for the patients that are happy to use them, you then free up the humans for the patients maybe in the older demographic that do wanna speak to a human about everything. And that’s the beauty of the return around the kind of automation side of things. It’s freeing up the time for the patients that really need it.

Jason Newbury-Smith
And outside of that, thing that, to be fair, I think everyone kind of not forgets about them, but puts them less down the pecking order, is actually the patient’s relatives, people who are coming in to visit and things like that.

We’ve got stories where people have had that horrible phone call, there’s been an accident, someone’s in the hospital and you literally race there, you’ve parked up, you’re running around the hospital, and let’s be honest, the signage is never great, and you’re trying to go,

Elena Pudge
What do It’s all

Charlotte
for the weird symbols and letters that the staff know, but you’re like, Where do I go?

Jason Newbury-Smith
Yeah, and when you’re in that high stress situation, that’s an absolute nightmare. So again, having the ability for someone to be able to log on and go, I’ve got to get to A and E, War III, whatever, and put that in as a chatbot, that’s brilliant. And that takes some of the stress of that situation away.

You’ve got League of Friends, they get hammered all the time for where do I find this, where do I find that. So that’s where the technology really comes in, and again, you’re then also not burdening humans to go, It’s over here.

Yeah,

Charlotte
I’ve always thought when you go into a big hospital particularly, like why don’t they just have a QR code by the door where you can access a map?

Elena Pudge
That would be really helpful, but there is a solution we could talk about.

Joseph Pratten
Was gonna say that.

Elena Pudge
But there are solutions around it, yes.

Not quite contact centres, but definitely do We

Joseph Pratten
talk

Charlotte
about that.

Joseph Pratten
Can do a separate one of hospitals.

But

Jason Newbury-Smith
we totally agree, and that is a different solution to the contact center piece, but actually they do cross over each other a little bit.

It comes back to that, as you were talking about a moment ago, being able to send out messages to say, This is the best car park to go. This is the entrance to come into. This is the way that you will find your location.

If that smart hospital has been set up The

Charlotte
parking machines don’t need pound coins, you can use your card.

Joseph Pratten
Yeah, absolutely.

Elena Pudge
Well, they do need pound coins, make sure you bring some.

Jason Newbury-Smith
Yes, But your phone will automatically log in and you will be able to what we call blue dot locate the place that you’re going. So it’s sat nav on your mobile phone in the hospital. All of that kind of stuff can be done by automated messages that originate out of that contact center.

Charlotte
Yeah, and that’s an extension of that self serve that you were talking about earlier, where the patients can be a lot more autonomous in what they’re doing.

Joseph Pratten
That customer And patients are coming to expect it. That’s one thing that I And this is across all public sector, is this customer experience benchmark. It is so easy to order a burger on Just Eat or Uber. Other fast food chains are available. But it’s so easy to do that.

But, yeah, if I want a doctor’s appointment, I’ve gotta play the eight AM scramble and hope to God that I get there just in the right time and then get past the receptionist who is and for all the right reasons, they are trying to monitor who gets who gets the twenty five appointments that are available at

Elena Pudge
the moment.

Joseph Pratten
Yeah. So And that’s as consumers, that’s what we’re expecting now.

And how can we help the NHS and public sector level up to

Charlotte
because you really notice it, don’t you, when it’s a poor experience now, I think, because exactly for that reason, because everywhere else or most other places, it’s a lot easier.

Jason Newbury-Smith
If you’re trying to get the GP appointment or you’re trying to get a referral or an appointment for a procedure, whatever that might be, you’re going to sit into a pathway somewhere that’s going to lead you along. Now, a lot of people, they might end up on a fifteen, sixteen, twenty week wait. That’s a long time, and unfortunately people just have to wait. There is no other option, but not having knowledge through that period can be very concerning to the individual and to the family that they’re in.

Charlotte
Yeah, absolutely.

And so having

Jason Newbury-Smith
the knowledge and having the tools in place, you’re able to send out again that directed communications to them and link them off to different apps onto different websites, whatever it might be, and we partner with other organisations that provide tools that say these apps are safe because there are so many of them out there in the world now that you can go in, they’re free, they’re chargeable, whatever it might be, and some of them aren’t safe. Some of them are giving really bad advice, whereas if you know that you’ve had from your GP or from the hospital to say, your surgery’s in twelve weeks, here’s what you can do in the meantime to be proactive,

Charlotte
or you

Jason Newbury-Smith
can help yourself with, are the apps that we Accurate

Charlotte
information, yeah.

Jason Newbury-Smith
They might not be free, but you can choose to go for those, but there will always be a free option within And again, that’s just something that helps that patient outcome.

Charlotte
Yeah.

So thank you, because I, for one, didn’t know a lot about NHS call centres at the beginning of this. And I found it, I think you guys have done an excellent job of really bringing it to life, as we talked about at the beginning, I think, because ultimately this is all about people, the clinicians, the patients, and everyone that supports them in what they’re trying to do day to day. So I think it’s been really interesting. So thank you all very much for your time.

Joseph Pratten
Thank you. Thank you.

Elena Pudge
Thank you. You.