In a typical month, the RSPCA mailboxes will handle around 29 million seconds of voice traffic, equivalent to 335 days worth of traffic per month. The messaging service implemented by TeleWare requires no changes to the existing RSPCA voice infrastructure and incurred no capital expenditure, the service being provided by TeleWare on a monthly charge basis as a hosted service.
The solution is a hosted voice application from which RSPCA distributes around 0.75 million calls annually to its Inspectors and Animal Collection Officers (ACOs) around the UK. These staff are responsible for the collection and recovery of animals following a call to the society’s National Control Centre (NCC) and, in the case of Inspectors, for investigating reports from members of the public of cruelty to animals.
“Prior to the installation of the TeleWare solution, our command & control centre staff contacted the ACOs and inspectors by telephone to brief them on incidents,” explained Richard Harding, Chief Superintendent (Projects) for the RSPCA. “This was both time-consuming and disruptive, especially when officers were busy following up a previous call and it was inconvenient or impossible for them to answer calls straightaway. Using the TeleWare hosted voice messaging, the system runs much more smoothly and we estimate this will save up to 10 hours a month in field staff time, as well as time in the NCC distributing work” added Richard.
Each officer and inspector now has their own voice mailbox, hosted at the TeleWare data centre in North Yorkshire. Command & control staff allocate each non-emergency incident requiring follow up by dialling the mailbox number of the required officer or inspector and leaving a message. The officers can retrieve a new message in their mailbox at their convenience
As the RSPCA staff work in teams on a shift basis, voice messaging also pays an important role in disseminating staff briefings. These are recorded into team mailboxes, which team members can later access at a time convenient to them.