How to … Re-tender your after-hours emergency service

many of us take the call centres we use for granted, yet the out-of-hours services they help provide, such as maintenance and alarm monitoring, are hugely important.

At Knightstone Housing Association, we took a close look at this last year. Our arrangements – with seven different call centres, each with different contracts and operating practices – had grown in an ad-hoc fashion because we tended to link our sheltered schemes to the nearest centres.

After consulting with recent service users and our sheltered housing supervisors, we decided to dust down the old contract and test the call centre market. We learned some valuable lessons along the way.

Look at your current resources
It’s important to establish at the outset your current stock, your on-site alarm monitoring equipment and key contact details such as contractors, staff and other service providers. Get a feel for the nature and volume of calls made by your tenants. Take a fresh look at staff cover arrangements for “out of hours”. Any interested call centre provider is going to ask you for this information, and they will need it to set a price.

Be very clear about the level of service you want to provide and the key performance standards you expect, otherwise you could easily be led into providing more expensive services that your tenants don’t really need.

We pulled together a detailed service specification, based on an analysis of our existing service and discussions with a range of helpful providers such as existing local authority-sponsored call centres and specialist housing associations. We also referred to the Association of Community Alarm Providers, who have set a code of practice for the industry with advice on good practice and service standards.

Getting your on-site staff on board at an early stage is critical to a successful transfer to a new provider. We sent our sheltered housing supervisors on visits to call centres and this helped allay their fears about switching to a new, and possibly more remote, call centre. They were also able to act as our advocates and played a key role in consulting with tenants and gathering data in the later stages.

The selection process
We used an advert in the trade magazines to invite expressions of interest. Call centres were asked to complete a detailed questionnaire focusing on qualitative aspects of the service:

• their existing customer base
  
• their capacity to take on the work
  
• references and evidence of past performance
  
• a realistic implementation plan.

We devised a scoring system, which enabled us to whittle the 30-odd submissions down to five. A staff/tenant panel interviewed the shortlisted companies and chose a final three. We did site visits at this stage, which were very revealing and helped us to get a feel for the culture and atmosphere of the call centres.

The handover
Our biggest lesson is to allow plenty of time for the handover: three months should be about right.

There is a huge amount of liaison to be undertaken and scheme systems need to be “reprogrammed” – allow about £100 per scheme for this. Staff directly involved in the service acted as the key contact for the call centre. Staff visits to the call centre also go down well in our experience.

Was it worth it?
We think so. Some of the main benefits are:

• all our alarm monitoring and “out-of-hours” services are now provided by one call centre, meaning better communication and consistency
  
• we’ve made real savings on both the alarms monitoring and servicing of equipment, savings we can pass on directly to our tenants
  
• feedback from users is excellent and we get regular reports on the service
  
• we have a contract and service specification in place that clearly defines the level of service provided.