NHS Direct, England’s 24-hour telephone and e-health information service, has completed the unification of its 36 contact centers with IP telephony from Nortel (News - Alert).

This implementation of an IP contact center has effectively improved the company’s service and efficiency by uniting previously siloed NHS facilities to achieve cost savings and make better use of resources through centralization.

Handling as many as six million calls per year, NHS Direct delivers telephone and e-health information services to the public, by telephone and the Internet, to provide valuable advice to patients, often with potentially life-threatening illnesses or injuries.

Purchased from Nortel partner BT (News - Alert), the new IP telephony contact center is one of a number of changes that have contributed significantly to NHS Direct’s consistent achievement of all the UK Department of Health targets for response times, performance and the speed with which patient issues are addressed.

To bring together NHS Direct’s 36 previously franchised and separate call centers, the company created a single, virtual contact center based on Nortel’s IP contact center technology. Through this migration, the centers have been unified and standardized, eliminating queuing times through the ability to answer more calls in less time with proper call routing.

In addition, inter-site calls are made through the Internet so there are no costs to the business. NHS Direct can also make use of the existing, dedicated NHS data network, known as N3, to unite all NHS operations across England.

Adrian Price, National ICT Infrastructure manager at NHS Direct, said in a Wednesday statement, "We wanted to improve the service we were offering, while benefiting from the cost savings that centralization should bring.”

“We recognized that the only way to create the desired consistency and efficiencies was through virtualization - joining up all call centres to create a united appearance - and the only way to do that was to deploy IP telephony across the country.”

“Of all the IP telephony solutions on the market, Nortel provided the highest pedigree at the best price. Having worked with Nortel since NHS Direct formed ten years ago, we knew they could provide the solutions we needed as well as support the implementation with a focus on minimizing disruption and downtime," Price added.

Peter Kelly, president, Enterprise Networks, EMEA, contributed in Wednesday’s statement: "NHS Direct has to be able to deal with the six million calls it receives each year so the network is not just business critical, it is life critical. Nortel's IP contact centre technology is simplifying business for NHS Direct as well as making it easier for patients to make use of the service through increased bandwidth and the resilience required to ensure the service is 'always on' 24/7.”

"Calls to NHS Direct are often about potentially life-threatening illnesses or injuries," said Murray Bain, director of ICT for NHS Direct, in Wednesday’s statement. "They need to be dealt with or passed on quickly. Nortel has given us the peace of mind that we are providing the best possible service to the public. Patients across the country can feel confident that, when they call us, their health concerns will be addressed rapidly."

This implementation by NHS Direct is a move that will enable the organization to deliver a better quality experience for all customers. While its previous structure does not necessarily guarantee poor service, dispersed locations that are not unified can create inconsistencies that can negatively impact perception.

 

By moving to a unified IP contact center, NHS Direct can guarantee consistency, control processes and services deliverables, while also effectively measuring for performance. With all of these things in place, the company is better suited to deliver a quality experience for the customer.