iCarol Messaging, is an add on feature that lets you offer your clients the ability to interact with your counsellors via exciting online channels like live chat / instant messaging. 

By simply adding a few lines of text to your public website, people in the public can initiate a chat session by filling out a registration form tailored to just what you want to collect. Their request is queued to the best available counselor, and the chat session is conducted through a secure channel in a regular web browser.

While there are many generic live chat services available, iCarol Messaging is very well integrated into the rest of iCarol's features, utilizing:

• Volunteer and  Staff profiles, so you can indicate which of your people are qualified to participate in chats
  
  
• Shift calendar, to indicate when people are available to be in a live chat
  
  
• Resources, so you can make referrals to these clients very easily
  
  
• Call report forms, so you can log transcripts, demographics and issues about each session with the familiar call report forms you use now for inbound phone calls
  
  
• Statistics, with charts and reports showing you the details of your messaging activity.
  
   

Why iCarol?

Why should you consider using iCarol Messaging, when there are dozens of generic chat services available?

It’s because your chat specialists need the same types of tools to serve someone in a chat session, as they would on the phone:

• We serve only non-profit help line, so we understand the needs of agencies like yours.
  
  
• We take security, privacy and anonymity seriously, with robust and audited technical safeguards in place to address all three.
  
  
• iCarol is compliant with important help line standards from groups such as the US National Suicide Prevention Lifeline (NSPL) and the Alliance of Information and Referral Systems (AIRS). We will continue to accommodate these evolving standards in the future.
  
  
• Chat specialists can search your resource database and make referrals that appear immediately on the client’s screen.
  
  
• Chat transcripts, characteristics and referrals can be logged for statistical purposes in a way that meets your unique reporting needs.
  
  
• If you also use iCarol to log calls, you can get a comprehensive view of all interactions with clients, whether by phone or live chat.
  
  
• We can enable networks of agencies like yours to offer a consolidated service together. Member agencies can join your collaborative on your own schedule, and we knit them together seamlessly when they do.
  
  
• The service is fully hosted, so your people simply need to access the internet with a web browser.

We take care of all the technical aspects, letting you focus on delivering quality service to your communities.

Contact us for a demo and see how easy it is to implement this increasingly important capability in your helpline.

Jill O, Director of United Way 2-1-1 and CONTACT Lifeline, affirms, "CONTACT USA's Crisis Chat service is thrilled that iCarol has developed a service on its current system called iCarol Messaging.  CONTACT USA and crisis center partners in Albany and Austin are using this chat service now as we complete internal testing and training for the national portal, Crisis Chat.  With so many other new considerations and questions involved in the transition from a call-based center to a center taking both calls and chat, it is a relief that the technology transition is taken care of by iCarol Messaging."