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Interagency Feedback Referral Response Mechanism Uganda.
By Alice Schaus, Associate Regional Innovation Officer, and Damjan Nikolovski, Community Connectivity Coordinator.
This post is the second in the Innovation Service’s series on call centers and provides guidance to humanitarian organizations considering whether a call center might be part of their broader community engagement strategy. If you missed the first article, you can find it here.
Initially, a team of twelve agents who spoke a total of sixteen languages was set-up for the pilot period. Due to the popularity of the call center, the call center has expanded to a team of thirty agents, eighteen for inbound calls and twelve for outbound calls, and today receives between 2000 and 3000 calls per month.
Based on our experience in Uganda, we would like to share the following five steps to help you understand whether a call center is the best option to solve some of your identified communication challenges
5 steps to take before setting up a call center:
- Identify the communications landscape in which you operate
Before deciding to set up a call center, you should consider the communications landscape in which you operate. You will have to gauge whether refugees are in remote scattered settlements or densely populated camps. This directly translates to the availability of channels through which refugees can approach humanitarian responders. If it’s a densely populated camp, an information center might be a more cost-effective solution than a call center — notwithstanding certain restrictions including security and access. For your communication landscape assessment consider conducting primary and secondary research depending on the available information.
Accessing a call center requires mobile devices, connectivity, electricity, and phone credit:
- Is there cellular coverage in your target area (or can it be restored soon)?
- Do people have access to a source of power (solar or generator) to keep devices charged?
- Can they afford to use mobile phones (e.g. cost of calling/data)?
- Do people own, or have access to, mobile phones or other communication hardware?
In some cases, existing data or studies might already be available, in others it might make sense to conduct primary data collection. The International Telecommunication Union (ITU), a specialized UN agency responsible for all matters related to information and communication technology, is the official source for global Information, Communication and Technology (ICT) statistics. They publish statistics on fixed-telephone subscriptions, mobile-cellular subscriptions, and the percentage of households with internet access on a by country basis.
Other useful resources include the reports and studies published by GSMA, an industry organisation that represents the interests of mobile network operators worldwide. The GSMA often releases studies looking at connectivity and access to mobile for refugees, internally displaced persons and other groups. For specific countries and regions, you’ll be able to find reports which include statistics on mobile penetration, access barriers and how people use their mobile devices. In 2019, the GSMA with support from UNHCR published a flagship report called The Digital Lives of Refugees on how refugees use mobile technology. This report outlined the discrepancies in mobile access and use for vulnerable segments.
When secondary data is limited or outdated, primary data collection might be necessary.
A good starting point is conducting an Information and Communications Needs Assessment. A ready-made template that can be adapted for a local assessment is available here. This assessment informs humanitarians about the main information sources used by the community, and how they communicate between themselves and humanitarian responders. It is important that the assessment uses means that are appropriate and accessible to all groups in a community — women, men, girls, and boys of diverse backgrounds — to reflect the needs of even the most vulnerable communities.
In Uganda, the remote scattered settlements, long walking distances to protection desks and the multiple, siloed, local feedback mechanisms, demonstrated the need for a unified system. The operation came to the conclusion that the best option would be to have the call center as a central component, to enable refugees to reach out to UNHCR, the Government of Uganda (GoU) and partners.
2. Identify the trusted channels of communication preferred by your users
The Information and Communications Needs Assessment is also helpful to understand the existing channels used by refugees to communicate with your organization and what their preferred and trusted means of communication are.
There might not be just one optimal channel, but several depending on different communities’ needs and for what they are used. Call centers are just one of the options that an organisation could consider in an omnichannel Accountability to Affected People (AAP) strategy. AAP is widely used in the humanitarian community to refer to the related commitments and mechanisms humanitarian agencies have in place to ensure that communities are meaningfully and continuously involved in decisions that directly impact their lives.
It’s also worth looking into alternative channels that could be used in parallel or instead of call centers such as:
- Print media: posters, leaflets, notice boards, billboards, magazines, etc.
- Broadcast: loudspeakers, radio, television, videos, etc.
- Social Media: Twitter, Facebook, Instagram, Telegram, etc.
- In Person: community meetings, face-to-face focus groups, door-to-door survey etc.
- Community based systems: community groups, religious leaders, etc.
- Internet: Email, Websites, etc.
- Messaging Apps: WhatsApp, Viber, Telegram, Facebook Messenger, etc.
- Phone: bulk SMS messaging, two way text messaging, call centers, etc.
In Uganda, a first rapid assessment was undertaken by the Innovation Service during their field mission to Uganda in 2017 to identify trusted channels. Refugees that participated in the assessment stated that the existing channels were not sufficient, expressed dissatisfaction of the feedback received after filing a complaint and emphasized the needs for more direct channels. l. As a result,UNHCR decided to hire a Community Connectivity Coordinator Officer to bring together the work of different partners into a coherent narrative around information provision and feedback, facilitating effective two-way communication using a variety of different tools, techniques and technologies.
One of the first tasks of the Community Connectivity Coordinator Officer was to set up a helpline. The operation also conducted an Information and Communication needs assessment which further confirmed the need to have more direct channels such as hotlines to reach UNHCR free of charge.
While conducting an Information and Communication Needs Assessment it is also important to take into account the cultural differences between communities. For instance in Uganda, South Sudanese refugees compared to refugees from other countries prefer to register complaints and feedback through protection desks or face to face. As a result, the difference in uptake and usage among South Sudanese compared to other population groups has been striking.
3. Identify the root causes of your challenge
There are a number of reasons why a call center might be set up; ranging from providing valuable information to refugee communities, through referrals and offering assistance, to remote case management and counseling, and responding to complaints and feedback.
When the operation in Uganda started the journey of designing and deploying the FRRM, the objective was to ensure coordinated and effective response to refugees’ needs by establishing a robust, comprehensive and confidential inter-agency Feedback, Referrals and Resolution Mechanism. It is UNHCR’s mandate as a protection agency to understand individuals across the range of their capacities, issues and concerns and not exclude certain groups from service provision. If it’s not possible to solve the issue at the call center, the call operators refer the call to the relevant organization or alternatively provide the caller with an alternative number.This will be further discussed in our next blog post on how to design the optimal call center solution.
The FRRM sought to leverage the preferred communication and reporting channels of communities. Realising that there will probably be multiple kinds of feedback and requests, the operation divided incoming cases into 5 categories, ranging from feedback that doesn’t require any intervention, to complaints, fraud, and sensitive protection cases.
Once a call center is in place, it could be used for activities far beyond its original purpose. The FRRM helpline was initially designed to receive inbound calls only. However, with the emergence of the COVID-19 pandemic in March 2020, a lot of pressure has been placed on the FRRM to perform multiple functions. These outbound activities include, information sharing, post cash distribution monitoring, remote protection monitoring, as well as conducting surveys and questionnaires. To help facilitate these activities, the helpline established an additional team of 12 agents who are exclusively focused on outbound calling activities. In the absence of in-person services, this has multiple benefits including: increased oversight and accountability, improved and proactive insight into the impact of programmes, proactive inclusion of persons with specific needs and other less represented groups.
4. Identify potential challenges to accessing the call center and how these can be mitigated
You will have to assess whether there is any risk of exclusion of the most vulnerable people and how you are going to address these. Factors of exclusion of certain groups could be access to devices, language barriers or digital literacy levels. Some of those barriers can be tackled by providing financial support or programming, such as digital literacy training to vulnerable groups. Depending on the refugee community, different language support will be required and in some cases it will be necessary to prioritize a few languages.
In Uganda, the design and development of the FRRM sought to take into account the varying needs of different populations groups and their preferred methods of contacting UNHCR and partners. For example, some individuals may demonstrate a preference for using the helpline while others may prefer face to face contact with field staff. As such, the FRRM has been designed to allow for cases to be captured through multiple input sources such as protection desks, helplines, community outreach volunteers, emails and complaints and suggestion boxes. This ensures that the system is accessible to the majority of the different population groups across the country.
5. Consider the administrative parameters
The purpose of a hotline and its scale will dictate the necessary costs for effective operation. Call centers can operate with a variety of operational scales — whether there are multiple operators with a complex Customer Relationship Management (CRM) system, or a single operator with a mobile phone and spreadsheet. Due to the significant resources that large-scale call centers require, practitioners need to look carefully at available funding to determine the most suitable option both in the immediate and longer term. To determine whether a call center is a worthwhile investment for an operation, a cost-benefit analysis which specifically looks at how a call center could support protection needs is essential.
Costs are to a large extent determined by staff needs. In Uganda, staff capacity (at the helpline level) was identified according to the language requirements of refugees living in Uganda. UNHCR tracks the number of calls received under each language group, the total number of calls received per day and the number of callers who were unable to reach the helpline because it was too busy. This enables the organisation to understand where additional staffing resources are needed and for what languages. As the number of received calls increased during the coronavirus crises, the tool was helpful to identify that additional resources would be required to sustain the demand. The helpline team was expanded from 12 to 18 agents for inbound calls and an addition of 12 agents just for outbound calls.
In conclusion, before investing time and money into a call center, we recommend that you consider the following 5 steps:
- Map out the landscape in which you operate and the broader community engagement strategy.
- Conduct a Information and Communications Needs Assessment to identify the channels of communication preferred by your users.
- Define the purpose of the call center.
- Understand the potential access challenges specific communities may face, and how these can be addressed.
- Work out what you will need in terms of funding to cover the set-up and running costs of the call center.
The next blog post in our series will provide guidance to operations or organisations who have already decided to invest in a call center solution and are currently in the set-up process.
