NHS unites contact centres with VoIP
Patients are set to benefit from shorter call waiting times while the National Health Service will save money on telephone bills after its 24-hour information service, NHS Direct, brought together its 36 contact centres using Voice Over IP (VoIP) technology.
Using the latest in online communications systems, calls to the service can now be re-routed from where they are received to any other call centre around the country, thereby cutting back on the times patients are put on hold.
"We wanted to improve the service we were offering, while benefiting from the cost savings that centralisation should bring,"; said Adrian Price, national ICT infrastructure manager at NHS Direct.
"We recognised that the only way to create the desired consistency and efficiencies was through virtualisation - 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".
According to the latest figures from the communications industry regulator Ofcom, there are currently more than one million active VoIP users across the UK, with this number expected to rise steadily.
About Us