If you’re like most helplines, you have several repeat callers who use your services regularly, often more than once per day. Having access to empathetic listeners brings comfort to those with chronic and persistent mental illnesses or developmental disabilities. They access your hotline as a part of their repertoire of daily activities and coping skills that keep them feeling supported and grounded.
They’re an important part of the work you do and they need your services, but have you stopped to think about how their calls affect your statistics?
Data collection on all calls, including those from your repeat callers, is very important. But one individual calling multiple times can skew your numbers on things like gender, age, race, and issues.
One thing we suggest is that you add a question on your Call Report that simply asks your phone worker whether or not the call being logged is from a repeat caller, with ‘Yes’ or ‘No’ options for the answer. This question could also be included on the ‘background’ tab of repeat caller profiles so it can automatically be collected when that profile is used.
If there comes a time where you need to exclude repeat calls from your data, now you have the option to do so. When it comes time to run a statistical report, add that question as a Call Content Filter. Select ‘No’ as the filter if you’d like to exclude all of your repeat callers from that report. A filter with the answer ‘Yes’ will show you just your repeat callers’ information. Applying no call content filter at all will show data from all your callers, repeat and non-repeat.
There’s a website that gives you the up-to-the-minute status of the various major iCarol systems, so you see what we see! Just go to Status.iCarol.com to get an instant look at our uptime as well as instructions for troubleshooting your internet connection if you have limited connectivity.
Feedback is critical to your phone workers’ professional growth and skill enhancement. Without it, call takers might feel left in the dark and unsure of whether they are doing a fantastic job or totally missing the mark.
Do you regularly take time to give written feedback to your call specialists? Devoting even a half hour of your day to reading call reports and giving written feedback can remind your call takers that you are taking quality assurance seriously and that someone reviews their call documentation. Something as simple as a “Nice work!” or “Good job with this one!” can encourage a phone worker after a difficult call.
If the call report leaves you asking questions or wishing they had done more, then the feedback area of the call report can be a great place to ask some questions or give suggestions on how to handle similar situations in the future. If you choose to make the feedback viewable to your other workers, it can serve as a training tool to them, though sometimes private feedback is best. And though written feedback is likely the quickest and least time-consuming method, consider those times when a phone call or in-person processing of the call may what your phone worker really needs.
Want some tips on how to incorporate call reports and/or feedback into your management plan?
Use the ‘Highlight’ feature – Does your call center have the ability to ‘highlight’ a call enabled? This feature allows certain calls to appear highlighted in yellow on the main calls page. Many clients use this to draw attention to calls or callers of which they want their phone workers to be aware. You could just as easily use this feature to highlight the ‘Call of the Day’ or draw attention to a call that deserves special recognition or serves as a great example of good phone work or superb documentation.
Review Call Reports at meetings – Do you have regular all-staff meetings? Choose a call report to review with your staff at your next gathering. It’s a great opportunity for your workers and volunteers to process a call together, praise the good work of the call taker, or talk about other ways they may have handled the challenges of that call.
Print Caller Feedback – Many clients choose to have the ‘Caller Feedback’ text box appear in their call reports. Once a month, extract your call report data from the Admin Tools section of iCarol and review the entries in the Caller Feedback field. Print the positive feedback your workers received from callers and post it somewhere in your call center. Reminders that callers appreciate their work and value the time spent on the phone can be a great morale booster for your volunteers.
On Veterans Day, HBO began airing the original documentary “Crisis Hotline: Veterans Press 1.” The documentary highlights the work of the call center in Canadaigua, NY that answers the National Suicide Prevention Lifeline’s phone line operated specifically for veterans at risk of suicide. The documentary features harrowing footage of crisis responders working to find anonymous callers in imminent danger, and the quiet and touching moments between the empathetic workers who listen without judgment and the veterans reaching out for help. Check your local listings, this documentary is not to be missed. Visit the HBO website for more information and to check the airtimes.
Recently a client (Mental Health Association of New York City) using iCarol through the worst of Hurricane Sandy in Manhattan shared these kind words about how it helped them work through the disaster:
“I wanted to let you know that iCarol was one of the few systems we use that stood the test of hurricane Sandy and for that we are very grateful. Chat was especially important because it was the only service we provide that continued without interruption and allowed us to respond to people in crisis. Our building transformer blew up causing us to lose power which had a huge impact on our phone and routing systems but iCarol stood and thanks to iCarol we were able to work remotely.”
–Gloria J., Senior Counselor
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With Hurricane Sandy approaching the Northeastern United States today, we’d like to remind folks of various ways to use iCarol before, during, and after a disaster:
Quickly add more staff and volunteers into your iCarol system using the import template and tool, found on the Admin Tools – Setup tab.
Use the shift calendar to help manage people’s duties during the disaster, even for non-phone based tasks and responsibilities.
Modify the security settings of those people so they can only access the information they need to. Do this by going into each person’s profile, Admin tab, then Advanced Security Settings. (Once you’ve set up settings for one person, you can save them so it is easier to apply the same settings to another person’s profile.)
Keep your highlighted resources (both inside iCarol and on your public-facing website) current and relevant.
Inside iCarol, you can also add “news items” to your main Resources page for your users, and have those updates push simultaneously to a public Twitter feed. This helps your workers stay updated on information and resources more quickly.
Import resources en masse into your iCarol system by using our standard, Excel-based template. (For example, schools may become temporary emergency shelters.)
Create special categories in your Resources for disaster-related preparedness and then assign resources to them accordingly, making it easier for them to be found.
If your policies allow it, prepare for some or all of your workers to access all iCarol features from locations other than your offices, like their homes, so they can continue to provide phone-based services even if they cannot get to your offices (and they still have power and internet access).
For past disasters (like Hurricane Isaac hitting Louisiana this summer) we have also rapidly granted special requests on a short term basis, like sharing resource databases amongst numerous partner centers. Feel free to ask us for such special capabilities so we can help you help your communities.
Our Specialized Resource Exports tool creates a Word or Excel document containing part or all of your Resource database, and can be used in case you want your users to have it on hand in case you lose connection to the internet. Contact us if you’d like to begin using this option add-on feature.
If you have any thoughts or ideas please post them to the iCarol User Community. We want to do our best to help you get through this challenging weather condition.
