Psychological support line

Request for psychological support

All the events linked to the Coronavirus create a particularly anxiety-provoking atmosphere and have dramatically increased the demand for psychological support.

There are so many factors:

Of course the fear of catching the virus
With omnipresent information and accounting (number of hospitalisations, number of resuscitations and number of deaths).
With all the uncertainties linked to this virus and especially the lack of knowledge of the exact after-effects.
With the hesitations and reversals of our leaders.
With containment measures that were particularly unpopular with a large part of the population.
With limitations on social life.
With the difficult accompaniment of our elderly
Etc ...

There is a real increase in psychological disorders and depression in the population. At the same time, there is a risk of saturation and exhaustion of health care personnel.

Given this situation and the increasing demand for psychological support, the telephone remains more than ever the indispensable link for psychological support.

Counselling line

Faced with this unprecedented situation, it was necessary to set up a number of free telephone helplines.

In order to respond to these calls, the associations organise a rotation with several psychologists spread over different sites or working from home.

The organisation is often complex in order to combine the availability of the counselling line with the different availability of volunteers.

The telecom service provider of the psychologist line had to meet the following specifications in a very short time:

A single toll-free number for landlines and mobiles.
Reception of the psychologist line by volunteers throughout France
Teleworking transfer to mobile or home landline
Manage a schedule in a simple way
Finding an intelligent call distribution system

Telephone planning

To meet this urgent need, the response recommended by Ab Plus was to set up a free 0800 number without delay and link it to a telephone schedule.

Without any installation, the telephone schedule can be set up very easily for weeks in advance from the Internet.

The first step is to contact all psychologists who can provide telephone consultations.

Then in a second step, week by week, you just have to select and drag the on-call psychologists into the time slots of the telephone schedule.

The call forwarding is then generated automatically by the telephone planning.

Call forwarding

Calls are then forwarded fully automatically to the people on call.

PLANITEL offers a solution that has been acclaimed for its simplicity and efficiency with the following operating mode:

Identify the psychologist or service in the time slot of the schedule that has handled the fewest calls.
Depending on the maximum number ofsimultaneous calls, check if it can take the call.
Transfer the call to him/her
In the event of no answer or busy signal, overflow in the same way to the next one with the fewest calls and so on if necessary.

This approach not only reduces the waiting time for people seeking psychological support but also balances the work of all volunteers as much as possible.

This solution is all the more effective as the slightest change in the schedule (absence, technical problem) is taken into account in real time and the psychologists can be given access to the telephone schedule in order to suspend the forwarding of calls by temporarily going off-line.