A Prescription for Success

NHS Direct has recently joined forces with Intec Business Colleges to provide Health Advisors working from its Wakefield contact centre the opportunity to gain nationally recognised qualifications and support the delivery of excellent customer service. NHS Direct is a 24 hour, seven days a week health advice and information service for people in England, providing patients with telephone advice from its 32 linked contact centres across England. Highly trained Health Advisors are the first point of contact for patients, providing the initial assessment and taking the patient’s details before passing them onto a qualified nurse if further advice is needed.

Susan Panther, Regional Learning and Development Lead at the regional centre, explained how the partnership came about. “When reviewing providers to help us develop front line staff, recommendations from colleagues across the Strategic Health Authority pointed me in the direction of Intec Business Colleges. I was very impressed with their response times and their willingness to adapt information specifically for our needs.” As a result a number of our health advisors are now undertaking NVQ Level 2 in Customer Service.”

“We have received very good support from Intec including an initial meeting to establish which courses where appropriate and how they would work for our staff. This initial meeting gave us the opportunity to ensure that the qualifications we selected met our specific training needs and complemented any other training we had in place.”

NHS Direct is committed to offering staff relevant and practical training as well as development opportunities. This NVQ Customer Service qualification allows staff to use their everyday experiences to develop and enhance their skills when dealing with customers. “It’s really important that our staff feel that they have the skills to provide excellent customer service because our service is completely customer-focused starting from our initial assessment of the patient’s health issue right through to the personalised advice they are given at the end of the call,” ended Susan.

If feedback from this training is positive, NHS Direct in Wakefield will then look at offering the NVQ training to more staff in its other contact centres later in the year.