An organisation moves most of its services online. Reporting, payments, applications and updates all work well and the telephone volume falls.
It does not fall as much as expected, and the calls that remain are longer, more complicated and from residents who cannot use anything else.
Those residents now wait longer, because the telephone team was reduced in line with the overall volume, and the people least able to use the alternatives got the worst version of the service.
Who is actually excluded
Residents without devices, without data, without connectivity, without confidence, and residents whose disability makes a particular route unusable.
Who is making the contact instead
Family members, neighbours, carers and support workers, frequently on behalf of somebody who cannot, and almost nothing is designed for them.
What the digital shift should fund
A better telephone service rather than a smaller one, since the calls that remain are the ones that genuinely need a person.
What to keep available on the telephone
Everything. A service available only online is a service unavailable to a proportion of residents, regardless of how good the online version is.
What to fix about the online routes
Plain language, working on old devices, low data usage and processes that can be paused, which is the accessibility ground in complaint process questions residents cannot navigate.
What assisted digital should mean
Somebody who will complete a process with a resident rather than direct them to a page, which is the only form of help that works for people who are genuinely excluded.
What to do about the person helping
Give them a route, permission to act and information written for them, since they are doing work the organisation would otherwise have to.
What the texting route offers
Many residents without internet have a basic phone, and a text based route reaches people that a website and an application never will.
What paper still does
Statements, letters and forms, which remain the only reliable channel for a proportion of residents and are frequently withdrawn first.
What the library and community routes do
Where public access exists, saying so specifically is more useful than a general suggestion to go online somewhere.
What not to do
Charge more, or offer less, to residents using non digital routes, which penalises exactly the households least able to absorb it.
What the data should show
Contact by channel against household characteristics, which most organisations do not look at and which reveals who is being served worst.
What the assisted route should cost
Nothing. Charging for a telephone alternative, whether directly or through a premium number, is a charge levied specifically on the residents least able to pay it.
What the letters should still say
Every written communication should carry a telephone number as prominently as any web address. Organisations that quietly demote the number in favour of a link are making a choice about who they are willing to serve.
Free the telephone by answering the routine online
An assistant handling the routine questions from residents who can use it means the telephone is genuinely available for the residents who cannot, which is the outcome a digital shift was supposed to produce and frequently does not. Handled with the care in how to handle sensitive questions in your chatbot, alongside rent and service charge questions from residents and a comparable access problem in branch access and digital banking questions. Start at try, see features, and the sector view sits under property management.