Case study: Leeds Hospitals Charity
Leeds Hospitals Charity was struggling to communicate effectively with volunteers. Previously, staff at the charity saw lengthy response times due to using less efficient communication methods like email and voice calls. Since taking up aql’s SMS service, they have seen a major uptick in response times.
Leeds Hospitals Charity assists Leeds Teaching Hospitals to deliver care for over a million patients and their families each year. Providing £5 million of additional funding per year, the charity allows Leeds Teaching Hospitals to afford additional treatment options above and beyond what the NHS government funding alone would allow.
With 60 staff and 150 volunteers working together to support Leeds Teaching Hospitals, simple and efficient communication is vital.
Struggling to communicate with volunteers effectively
In the past, Leeds Hospitals Charity faced difficulties organising the logistics of volunteer scheduling. The lack of a simple means to send and receive SMS messages en-masse to and from volunteers was impacting the efficiency of the charity’s operation and was time-consuming for the staff in control of scheduling. Further, with email and voice calls as their primary means of communication, the volunteers who didn’t have regular access to email or the time to take phone calls were not being reached effectively and, as a consequence, shifts were going uncovered.
Using aql’s SMS service to enable efficient communication with volunteers and achieve faster response times
After trialling aql alongside other competitors, Leeds Hospitals Charity decided on us as “aql’s platform was far easier to use than the other platform that we trialled, ultimately leading to us choosing them as a long-term provider”. After trialling our SMS service in the summer of 2021, implementation of our platform into the charity’s day-to-day operations proved simple and effective.
Rachel Robinson, the charity’s volunteer services manager said,
“We have pushed texts out to see if volunteers are available for last-minute shifts, and we have used text messages to convey a change to shift times, and in both instances volunteers have responded almost immediately. SMS is a much quicker and less resource-intensive way of getting the quick responses we need. We’ve also found it’s a really good way of re-engaging volunteers who have been unresponsive compared with sending emails.”
