Probably not, if the recent report from the Telephone Helplines Association (THA) is anything to go by.

The role of THA

THA supports those who set up and develop non-profit telephone helplines in the UK. The majority of THA's 500 members are in the voluntary sector. Anecdotal evidence suggested that, despite their focus on the telephone channel, most of these agencies did not have their own in-house sources of expertise on telephony. THA, also represented on the ICT Hub's Advisory Group, suspected that that this advice gap might apply even more to the wider voluntary sector, so submitted a proposal as part of the Hub's Unmet Need Fund to explore the use of telephony across the sector in England. The proposal was accepted and the work was undertaken last summer. The sector promoted links to an online questionnaire hosted by the SurveyMonkey system.

Almost 250 responses came back from agencies with turnover ranging from under £10,000 to over £1 million. The survey was aimed at the general manager rather than the accidental techie, and THA was pleased to find that it was non-specialist senior staff who provided the majority of responses.

The survey says

The survey revealed that the sector was clearly interested in applications of converging technologies such as unified email/voicemail messaging systems that are now available through internet telephony (VOIP) and mobile email/telephone devices such as the Blackberry. But, less predictably, a lot of attention was directed at areas that could have been listed ten years ago. Agencies wanted to find out more about queueing systems. Even established service providers were keen to learn about legacy equipment such as textphones because they could use these to increase their accessibility. Organisations wanted to find out more about their call traffic than their current bills could tell them. The sector also put telephone skills training high up on its sector's shopping list.

Lack of a systematic approach

Despite these aspirations, the survey found little evidence of a systematic approach for taking things forward. The majority of respondents had no formal method for identifying telephony needs and no specific budget other than for line rental and call costs. The main impediment, after cost, to making progress with telephony was the lack of in-house expertise, with many respondents complaining about a lack of independent external sources to consult. Connections had not been made between the ICT Hub initiatives and telephony advice.

Funding and purchasing

There were mixed responses to questions about how funders viewed telephony. It really did depend on the project, with some funders shouldering both setup and ongoing costs and others ignoring these completely.

The majority of respondents purchased their telephone services directly. Suppliers were felt to be particularly insensitive to the needs of the sector, making little attempt to understand its business before offering solutions. Perhaps understandably, because of its size and continued dominance in the market, BT attracted much of the criticism.

A voice for 'voice'

In a world where blogging and websites dominate the headlines, it can be easy to ignore the voice channel. But we still resort to voice when the other routes don't give us what we want, so it continues to play a central role in our communications with stakeholders. THA believes that voluntary and community organisations should adopt as strategic an approach to telephony as they do with the rest of IT – identifying what it needs, developing or having access to guidance on what options are available and monitoring costs and benefits.

Mark McLean

Telephone Helplines Association (THA)

Direct line: 0151 641 9746 -Main office: 0845 120 3767

Email: Mark.mclean@helplines.org.uk

Web: http://www.helplines.org.uk

You can download the whole report ICT Hub / Telephone Helplines Association "Making Connections" (June 2006) at http://www.icthub.org.uk/research/. If you have any comments or ideas about the role of telephony in ICT, you can reach Mark at Mark.mclean@helplines.org.uk