Food4Heroes, a not-for-profit organization providing free, nutritious and healthy meals for frontline care workers and National Health Service (NHS) staff, was established in response to the COVID-19 pandemic.
Since its launch in March, hundreds of people have reached out to the organization to get involved. To efficiently manage this interest, Food4Heroes is leveraging technology from Genesys, the global leader in cloud customer experience and contact centre solutions.
As part of its Rapid Response offer, the company is giving Food4Heroes its contact centre solution, Genesys Cloud, free of charge so the not-for-profit organization can use webchat to assist people wishing to donate or volunteer for the cause.
Food4Heroes works with local catering companies to provide meals for key workers within NHS Trusts’ COVID-19 wards as well as care workers in the community. The not-for-profit organization now serves 24 hospitals across the United Kingdom.
Food4Heroes also has 820 volunteers at present, with more enquiries coming in daily. It has now delivered 100,000 meals in just over a month.
“Since starting Food4Heroes we have grown rapidly in terms of the number of hospitals and catering companies we work with,” says John Brownhill, co-founder at Food4Heroes.
“One of the challenges we had was that people who wanted to volunteer or donate didn’t have a mechanism to contact us immediately if they had any questions.”
“The chat is helping us actively convert queries into donations that we could potentially lose if people didn’t have means to talk to us directly.”
Chat Provides Answers in Real Time
Food4Heroes went live with Genesys Cloud’s webchat functionality in less than a week. The not-for-profit organization now has 11 volunteer agents staffing the channel to manage donations and recruit more volunteers across the regions it is currently active in.
“We can now actively respond to questions about our charitable status for people wanting to donate,” explains Brownhill.
“This ensures that we can carry on delivering meals to frontline NHS staff and care workers.”
“Additionally, we are able to assist volunteers with their application status and answer any questions that they may have about volunteering.”
Food4Heroes has also valued the simplicity of Genesys Cloud that allows its volunteers to work from anywhere and onboard quickly.
“Our agents are all volunteers ranging from 18 to 60 years of age. One key requirement was to have an intuitive solution that they could use from their homes,” Brownhill explains.
“Prior to this, our volunteers had not worked with such technology, so having something that is easy to use has been a great benefit to us.”
“Training is straightforward and something we do virtually. After half an hour introduction, the volunteers are comfortable going on queue.”
Preparing for the New Normal
Food4Heroes has already made plans for the future, with a vision to continue providing healthy meals to key workers once the COVID-19 crisis has passed.
“We established our purpose and very much see that the not-for-profit organization has a future beyond the current crisis,” says Brownhill.
“Once the pandemic is over, we are looking at carrying on working with care workers and frontline NHS staff by providing healthy meals.”
“We are also looking at expanding our work to cover other areas of the health industry, and the chat will play a crucial role in this.”
Author: Robyn Coppell
Published On: 7th May 2020 - Last modified: 12th May 2020
Read more about - Industry News, Coronavirus, Genesys
