Case Studies Details

The Client
Sport Relief is a UK-wide fundraising event organised by Comic Relief every two years. The idea is that everyone get’s active, raises cash and helps to change lives. Comic Relief spends the money raised to make a difference to the lives of poor and disadvantaged people in the UK and across the world’s poorest countries.

The Requirement for Sport Relief
For Sport Relief 2008 the charity operated its own call centre within its London office to deal with enquiries about the Sainsbury’s Sport Relief Mile Events and sign up Milers to take part. Registrations and enquires by phone were expected to increase dramatically as the event date approached and offered to possibility that the charity’s own in-house service may not have the capacity to deal with the potential call volume. As a charity Sport Relief wished to keep their expense base as low as possible and not recruit an outsourced resource that may not be needed. Additionally the charity uses it’s own in-house system for managing registrations.

The Solution
granbytalk. Following meetings with the Sport Relief team Granby proposed a 2-stage solution to the clients needs.

Stage 1 – This involved two key Granby staff spending time with the Sport Relief call centre team to be trained in the processes and methods they use, as well as learning how to use the in-house system and understand how calls are handled. The Granby team then trained a selected group of agents to be able to handle Sport Relief call activity should this activity be needed. These staff once trained were placed on ‘immediate standby’ to begin taking Sport Relief calls if necessary. At this point the only cost incurred by the charity was for the time needed to train the Granby team. There was an agreed timescale to ‘switch on’ any outsource requirement if volumes dictated but no other standby charges or commitment to undertake any work.

Stage 2 – About 2 weeks prior to the Sport Relief Mile event the call volumes handled in London began to increase and the charity decided to ‘turn on’ the additional resource available at Granby. Calls were being handled within 1 hour of this first request and fully capacity was established within the agreed service level standard.

The Results
The 2008 Sport Relief event was great success. Registrations and general enquiry calls relating to the 2008 event were handled as normal during the final 2-week period without any noticeable change to the call handling performance during the quieter periods before this.