Pre-planning
What is the recommended number of resources required to run Hampshire Adviceline effectively?
To handle the current demand of 3 million calls a year, each bureau is expected to have one full time equivalent assessor (this could be 5 or 6 volunteers). Some bureaux may contribute ten or twenty hours of assessor time a week, whilst others could contribute eighty or ninety. To be able to answer an increase in calls, you will need to review the current level of service each bureau offers (i.e. face to face, telephone, outreach, email etc) and make any changes required.
How do we decide how to staff the phones so that callers can get through to an assessor?
You will need to identify the days when you will have assessors available. This information will be collated to create a rota to share across those bureaux who are live with Adviceline.
How do we ensure we only get call from clients in our group/district area?
You will need to identify all the local telephone codes and boundaries so you can detect out of area calls. Case reports will provide you with this information but be prepared to put aside the time to analyse the data – for some bureaux this is a bigger task than for others, depending on geographical and telephone boundaries. Hampshire Advice Plus has already requested this information and CitA are ‘unpicking’ the codes for each bureau.