Capita’s customer management business, based in South Yorkshire, recently hosted a two day fundraising event to celebrate its 10 year partnership with the RSPCA. The two days included events ranging from animal fancy dress and a cake sale to a Christmas gift wrapping station where employees could get gifts wrapped beautifully in exchange for a small fee.
Capita customer management has been acting as the RSPCA’s contact centre since 2003 deploying RSPCA personnel to locations where their help or intervention is required. In 10 years the Dearne Valley based 24/7 team of 150 Capita employees has taken over 10 million calls, managed 68,000 web enquiries and sent RSPCA officers to more than 4.6 million incidents across the UK.
Neville Doughty, client manager at Capita Customer Management, who manages the contract, said: “One of the first and most significant developments Capita undertook in 2003 was to centralise the service, moving from the ten regional bases to one national control centre. This has brought about substantial cost savings, improved efficiencies and facilitated a much more professional operation; 2009 saw a saving of £417K, while in 2010 the budget was maintained despite a 14% increase in call volume.
“Another key initiative has been the area of ‘caller resolution’. This involves problem solving with callers to establish whether an RSPCA team member actually needs to be deployed to the situation. Through specially developed training the contact centre staff are able in many cases to help the caller resolve the issue themselves which in turn ensures that RSPCA officers can be focused where they are really needed.”
Over time the team has also come to play an increasingly integrated role in the charity’s activities. As well as fielding calls from the public, they now play a part in fund raising – handing callers off to the dedicated team where appropriate. They are also sometimes called upon to play a supporting role in legal proceedings – capturing evidence during calls and providing notes that are made for reference during prosecutions.
Donna Minty, operations manager at Capita Customer Management, who has been working on the contract since the beginning said: “I love my job. Every day my team and I play a key part in sending RSPCA officers out to help ensure that animals which are ill treated or neglected get the help they need. It’s often heart breaking but hugely rewarding.”
