Kids Help Phone Deploys Verint Customer Engagement Cloud Platform to Manage Increased Demand for Mental Health Services During Pandemic

By STS News Desk On Jun 30, 2021

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Canadian Mental Health Organization Expands Operations Using Verint Cloud and Workforce Management

Verint^®, the Customer Engagement Company^™, today announced that Kids Help Phone, a Canadian national e-mental health service for young people, is expanding its use of Verint’s Cloud Workforce Management (WFM) solution to address unprecedented increases in call volumes due to the COVID-19 pandemic.

“We’re proud to partner with Verint to address the increased demands we’ve experienced over the past year due to the pandemic”

Canada’s only 24/7 national support service, Kids Help Phone offers e-mental health and well-being support to young people through bilingual professional counseling, clinically-based tools, resource referrals and crisis support services. The organization gives millions of kids, teens and young adults a safe and trusted space to talk in any moment of need−by phone, through text or in self-directed support.

In 2020, Kids Help Phone had over 4.6 million connections with young people compared to 1.9 million connections in 2019. To address this increased demand for services, the organization hired more than 50 new counsellors, trained over 1,800 new crisis responders, curated new COVID-related resources on its website and launched a new texting service.

Kids Help Phone is implementing the Verint WFM solution, part of the Verint Customer Engagement Cloud Platform, to enhance and improve forecasting and scheduling of professional counsellors. This upgrade to the Verint Cloud Platform will allow the organization to retire its existing hardware and leverage the WFM solution to operate more effectively and better serve members.

“We’re proud to partner with Verint to address the increased demands we’ve experienced over the past year due to the pandemic,” said Alisa Simon, SVP, Innovation & Chief Youth Officer, Kids Help Phone. “We are looking forward to gaining efficiencies by moving to Verint’s Cloud platform, which can easily scale to accommodate growth, while the WFM solution provides visibility and flexibility in scheduling our professional counsellors. Ultimately, we gain the ability to schedule the right number of people at the right time to deliver the service levels required to meet the critical needs of youth across Canada.”

“Verint is pleased to provide support to Kids Help Phone,” says Verint’s Celia Fleischaker, chief marketing officer. “One of our core values and the focus of our philanthropic efforts is to support the communities in which we live and work with a special focus on projects that benefit children in need. We are honored to play a part in supporting their counsellors and responders with workforce management solutions to improve forecasting and scheduling capabilities — all with the ease and scalability of the cloud.”

Verint Workforce Management^™ leverages artificial intelligence-infused automation and new mobile tools to streamline forecasting and scheduling and improve employee engagement. The solution offers an intuitive, modern, user experience that streamlines scheduling with fewer clicks and screens, making common tasks more efficient for workforce managers and simplifying the path to proficiency for new users. It reduces time and effort, taking into account sick and overtime employees, user skills and multilingual capabilities, time zone variations, and employment requirements. With Verint Workforce Management, managers have the tools to meet service level agreements (SLAs) while also providing the workforce with the flexible, work-from-anywhere schedules they require.

The Verint Customer Engagement Cloud Platform is uniquely designed to scale from small to large enterprise across many industries and use cases. It draws on the latest advancements in artificial intelligence (AI) to connect work, data and experiences so brands can meet ever-increasing, ever-shifting demands and build enduring customer relationships.

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