IT&E routed the American Red Cross NMI Chapter\u2019s phones to its call center in Susupe yesterday afternoon, providing 24\/7 assistance to the chapter\u2019s casework efforts following the destructive Typhoon Soudelor.<\/p>\n
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There have been several thousands calls into the chapter since Typhoon Soudelor tore across the island over a week ago, destroying or damaging homes and leaving families in need of assistance.<\/p>\n
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The local chapter, though, has only had a few operators working the phone line. Red Cross has already taken in some 4,000 calls.<\/p>\n
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The chapter also closes at 6pm. With calls going to the call center, residents can provide their information 24\/7 to IT&E operators who input them into a shared database with caseworkers.<\/p>\n
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The chapter\u2019s three phones\u2014at 234-3459\u2014clicked over to the call center at around 4pm yesterday, according to Rob Harrell, IT&E Customer Operations executive director. Operators were learning \u201cscript\u201d over the last couple of days.<\/p>\n
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\u201cWe are here to support them as long as they need us,\u201d Harrell said.<\/p>\n
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\u201cI know the Red Cross has probably taken some 4,000 [calls]. And I think the important thing is, once [residents] call in, they don\u2019t need to call in again. I know there is a lot of duplication right now, so we are trying to clean up the contact list.\u201d<\/p>\n
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\u201cThis will be able to help the Red Cross people focus more on the individual\u2014because they haven\u2019t been able to make outbound calls because they are getting so many calls in,\u201d Harrell said.<\/p>\n
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Mary Anderson, American Red Cross site delivery manager, yesterday said, \u201c\u2026Our girls that are making the phone calls here with the three phones we got [are] going to stop doing it and the call center\u2019s going to take over.\u201d<\/p>\n
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\u201cYou are not going to get a busy signal,\u201d Red Cross executive director John Hirsch said on Wednesday. \u201cYou are going always to get an operator. They are going to get your information. We are sharing our database with them so they can have access exactly\u201d as Red Cross does.<\/p>\n
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Harrell highlighted residents calling in with prepaid numbers would not be charged load.<\/p>\n
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Harrell also said they would help ease the long lines at Red Cross by making sure that when they do outbound calls, that only one head of the household shows up for appointment.<\/p>\n
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The outbound calls will tell residents what day and time to go to the Chapter after caseworkers process their information and damage.<\/p>\n
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\u201cAs soon as we put it in, the caseworker can go into those files also,\u201d Harrell said.<\/p>\n
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He said they aim to help make the process more efficient by \u201ccleaning up\u201d the system and matching the name of applicant with their appointment number faster, for example.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
IT&E routed the American Red Cross NMI Chapter\u2019s phones to its call center in Susupe…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":47,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[4],"tags":[2459,6538,3757,6333],"class_list":["post-208008","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-local-news","tag-american-red-cross","tag-mary-anderson","tag-rob-harrell","tag-typhoon-soudelor"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/208008","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/47"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=208008"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/208008\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=208008"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=208008"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=208008"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}