Päijät-Häme Hyvinvointialue Moves to Cloud-based Nispa Callback Solution

Päijät-Häme hyvinvointialue organises the management of social and health care, and rescue services for over 200,000 residents in the ~6500km² area of Päijät-Häme.

It is a public statutory body, which receives state funding to ensure equal access for all residents to public healthcare, various welfare programmes, and emergency services, to name a few.

Päijät-Häme’s phone infrastructure is a critical part of their operations for booking appointments. They handle 4000 to 8000 calls per weekday through 140 service numbers and the system is used all year round, 24 hours a day.

To handle call volumes efficiently and to ensure optimum responsiveness to their residents, Päijät-Häme used LeadDesk’s Nispa callback system with an on-premise infrastructure. The callback system allows residents to request a callback from Päijät-Häme without having to wait in a queue.

Päijät-Häme’s contract with their providers was coming to an end, and they had identified new needs for their solution, which included new features and moving to a cloud-based solution. These improvements would help them serve the residents of Päijät-Häme more effectively.

Need: Cloud-Based Nispa that allows better resource allocation

Päijät-Häme made a public tender for a cloud-based callback solution. Moving to a cloud service was a large part of the tender, as it would free up resources to focus on their primary mission of serving the residents of Päijät-Häme.

“We chose a cloud solution so that the service provider would take care of the servers and infrastructure, meaning we can focus our resources more on the important work of health and social service matters,” explains Sari Snicker, ICT Product Manager at Päijät-Häme hyvinvointialue.

Päijät-Häme were also looking for some new features their previous on-premise solution did not have:

• 2-way SMS Capability – a new communication channel that allows residents to reply to messages sent out to them, to cancel appointments for example.
• Callback and Call Queue Equalisation – callback requests retain their position in the queue relative to calls, so they can be handled on a first-come, first-served basis, whether it’s a live call or a callback request.

LeadDesk was able to fulfill Päijät-Häme’s tender requirements as a cloud-based Nispa callback system provider.

Results: Cloud-Based Nispa with new features and communication channels for improved resident support

Transferring from on-premise to cloud was organised with careful preparation and planning, working by the agile methodology. Experts from Päijät-Häme, their telecommunications operator, and LeadDesk worked together to make the migration a success.

The migration took about three months, a relatively short time for this scale of project.

“The migration from on-premise to cloud went smoothly even though the schedule for the entire project was quite tight. With LeadDesk, it was quite easy to plan the transition to the cloud, because they knew our needs” recalls Jarkko Kuisma, the ICT Project Manager at Päijät-Häme hyvinvointialue.

Easy Onboarding Users to the New System

The new Nispa system is an upgraded version of the previous system with some new features, so it was easy for staff to become familiar with the software. For new features, there was additional training and access right management for users who would be using those features.

Reduced Idle Time with a New Customer Contact Channel

The 2-way SMS feature has opened an interactive yet asyncronous communication channel for Päijät-Häme and their residents. Appointments can be cancelled quickly and easily via text message, and this helps Päijät-Häme reduce idle time caused by no-shows.

Callback Requests Fulfilled More Quickly

Previously, active calls waiting in the queue were addressed more quickly than callback requests. Now, callback requests and active calls stay in their order on the queue, so if you were 5th in the queue when you made a callback request, you will be called back after the four people before you are served.

More Resources for Health and Social Matters

The migration to cloud means that the daily business of maintaining the servers and infrastructure of the system is now handled by LeadDesk, freeing up resources for Päijät-Häme to focus on tasks more important to their primary mission.

Future Plans

Päijät-Häme are committed to continuously enhance their service for their residents. They are always looking for new ways to make healthcare, social welfare and emergency services smarter and more accessible for all. In the future, they will be looking for ways to integrate their other systems with Nispa, to further improve overall service for their residents.

Contributors

A special thanks to the key people involved in this project for contributing their experience and insights to this case study:

• Sari Snicker is the Product Manager at Päijät-Häme hyvinvointialue. She has over 20 years of experience working with the health and welfare institutions of municipalities around Finland, managing their IT and ICT processes and software.
• Esa Lehtonen is an ICT Partner with Päijät-Häme hyvinvointialue. He has been responsible for IT and ICT system design for public organisations for over two decades.
• Jarkko Kuisma is the ICT Project Manager at Päijät-Häme hyvinvointialue.