10 February 2025
Steve Duncan, Account Manager – Central Government & Public Safety, Avaya UK
When it comes to emergency services, seconds count. This means that the South-Central Ambulance Services (SCAS) needs its technical infrastructure to support its skilled front-line staff in the way they need to work for the best results possible.
Specialist emergency services contact centre
SCAS is the 24/7 emergency ambulance service for over 7 million people living in the English counties of Berkshire, Buckinghamshire, Oxfordshire, and Hampshire. It employs over 2,000 specialist staff to handle more than 500,000 urgent calls a year from its contact centres across the region (as well as homeworkers).
The service requires that both 999 emergency calls and 111 non-emergency calls are handled through the same technical infrastructure and operational units. Its skilled staff answer the growing number of 111 calls but are also needed to be able to rapidly reorient to handle any sudden incoming 999 calls if a large-scale incident or emergency occurs. This is only possible with contact centre technology that enables managers and supervisors to react to changing situations easily and efficiently on the fly.
Emergency calls into the SCAS contact centre can also require multiple specialist medical experts to listen in to help speed up the initial triage of a patient and determine the next steps e.g., dispatch an ambulance as soon as possible for critical cases. Enabling such a unique multi-disciplinary approach, that also provides the flexibility needed to support the 999/111 blended answering roles, necessitated a bespoke solution for SCAS. FourNet, a specialist in secure cloud, CX consulting and digital transformation in the public sector, was able to deliver this via its experience and partners in the Avaya ecosystem.
Bespoke tailoring
FourNet was able to confidently look to the ecosystem for specific expertise and the right amount of co-development support to build the bespoke front-end application SCAS required for its very specific needs including:
- A comms-screen that provides a full operational overview and real time status visibility between agent and supervisor.
- Chat capability between agents, supervisors, and departments/roles.
- Skill/role assignment during login process.
- Bookmarking of agent- and department-based favourites.
- Instant replay of recorded calls for agents.
- Enhanced supervisor functionality.
- A ‘raise my hand’ functionality to support homeworkers trying to contact a supervisor if help is needed.
To solve the challenge, Engelbart Software GmbH, a specialist developer for the operation and management of IT and unified communication and collaboration services, was consulted. Its proposal was to use its esuits2 applications framework as an alternative UI making it possible to define and design the integrations and user interfaces required by SCAS.
“The building of a bespoke frontend for SCAS is a fantastic example of how an ecosystem of technology and specialist partners can draw on best-in-class innovation to deliver a tailored next-generation customer and employee experiences solution.”
“Engelbart Software became fully embedded into the process of solution specification and design for the new bespoke user interface. Its developers’ detailed experience with Avaya application programming interfaces (APIs) and software development kits (SDKs) as well as their open approach to fully understanding the customer’s business requirement allowed all stakeholders to drive the project even beyond the initially scoped set of requirements,” said Markus Bornheim, Avaya International Practice Lead for Public Safety & Emergency Services.
The bespoke functionality requested by SCAS and provided by the esuits2 SPC includes a comms-screen for real-time status visibility between Agents and Supervisor; chat between Agents, Supervisors and departments/roles; the ability to agent assign skill/role during login and bookmarking of Agent- or department-based favourites. Supervisors also benefit from enhanced functionality including the ability to listen-in to existing calls; change skill / role assignment on the fly; change Agent status; remote Agent logout and replay of recorded calls. For the support of a work from home scenario a ‘raise my hand’ functionality has been implemented to contact a supervisor if help is needed from the agent.
Partner for success
FourNet works with more than half the UK’s Ambulance Trusts and has supported SCAS since 2018 to deliver life critical services.
“FourNet builds partnerships with all its public safety customers; this ensures we have excellent knowledge of working practises within the organisations and also knowledge of the marketplace and the solutions available to help improve patient/citizen safety in the UK,” said said Ben Ryland, Head of Public Sector, FourNet. “SCAS is a Global Digital Exemplar market-leader, which is an internationally recognised NHS provider delivering improvements in the quality of care, through the world-class use of digital technologies and information. FourNet helped SCAS gain recognition for delivering world-class quality care through digital technologies and information, setting the blueprint to enable other trusts to follow in its footsteps as quickly and effectively as possible.”
It takes an ecosystem
“With help from FourNet and its partners, we ended-up with a solution that fulfils our needs and more,” said Chris Hayden, Telecoms Manager at SCAS. “The management and team leaders now have much more control and visibility over their Agents than previously and they are now able to manage the various contact centre behaviours much more effectively.”
The building of a bespoke front-end for SCAS is a fantastic example of how an ecosystem of technology and specialist partners can draw on best-in-class innovation to deliver a tailored next-generation customer and employee experiences solution.
