Homeless Link Handles a 250% Increase in Calls

Homeless Link has been able to handle a 250 percent increase in calls while operating remotely, in response to the COVID-19 pandemic, with the Vonage Contact Center.

Homeless Link is the national membership charity for organizations working directly with people who become homeless in England and Wales.

In partnership with St Mungo’s, the charity uses the Vonage Contact Center to provide its 24/7 StreetLink telephone service which is a means of ensuring rough sleepers are connected to their local services and the support available to them.

With ‘business as usual’ disrupted amid the COVID-19 pandemic, Vonage enabled StreetLink to seamlessly transition all employees from working at its offices to their homes overnight, while handling up to 700 calls a day.

“When the government announced the lockdown, calls to StreetLink increased substantially. At the same time, our team needed to start working entirely from home,” said Gareth Thomas, Senior Information Manager at Homeless Link.

“The Vonage Contact Center has been absolutely invaluable for StreetLink since it enabled us to quickly react to the changing circumstances and move employees to 100 percent remote work without ever having to disconnect phone service.”

“Without the Vonage Contact Center, we would not have been able to offer our phone service at all over the last few weeks.”

Vonage’s award-winning contact centre solution integrates communications channels without expensive, disruptive hardware changes and plugs straight into an organization’s CRM platform, meaning StreetLink’s 20 agents benefit from immediate access to a caller’s history of interactions, improving handling time and the caller experience.

As a flexible, scalable cloud solution, agents can log into the Vonage Contact Center wherever they are and it can be easily scaled in line with StreetLink’s needs, effectively boosting the organization’s response to any increase in demand.

“StreetLink’s volunteer-led service is vital in helping to tackle homelessness by enabling members of the public to link people who are sleeping rough with the local services that can support them.”

“At a time when working at the office isn’t an option, it’s crucial for the charity to stay connected with the public without disruption,” said Rodolpho Cardenuto, President, Vonage Applications Group.

“We’re pleased that the Vonage Contact Center has enabled StreetLink to easily operate remotely and manage the upsurge in call volumes, while delivering the best possible support to callers.”

Author: Robyn Coppell