Better experiences for supporters and agents with Twilio Flex

Overview

Oxfam is a global movement of millions of people who share the belief that poverty is not inevitable. Oxfam GB is one of the 21 affiliates that make up the Oxfam confederation, which works in over 90 countries.

Oxfam GB has over 550 charity shops throughout the UK, as well as a fast-growing online charity shop, festival popup shops, specialist boutiques and vintage shops selling second-hand items, and fair-trade, ethical gifts.

Volunteers, fundraisers, and campaigners work together for a kinder, fairer world.

Moving to Flex

Oxfam GB was looking for a cost-effective way to better meet the needs of supporters, shop networks, and internal operations.

Knowing it was time to move to a cloud solution that could scale with the organisation, Oxfam GB moved to Twilio with the help of Zing.

Twilio Flex was deployed, providing a fully customisable contact centre that seamlessly connects users across different partners, provides centralised support, and is integrated with Salesforce.

“A big thing for us is that Twilio integrates with Salesforce. Instead of agents having to use several systems to record and respond to calls, everything is automated and linked. It’s not only a lot more efficient for our team, but also a much smoother process for our supporters,” says Jenny Worwood, Head of Supporter Relations at Oxfam GB.

With the first phase going live in 2021, Oxfam GB immediately started noting ways to build and expand upon the platform.

“I’m not a fan of the term but the initial goal was going live with a ‘Minimum Viable Product’. Achieving that, we knew we were in a great position to build further. We began listing all the things that we wanted Zing to help make happen,” says Jenny.

One of the biggest requirements was enabling donations and payments to be taken via Twilio Pay on outbound calls. It was also important to bring all call recordings together in one place, addressing the complexity of ensuring PCI (Payment Card Industry) compliance, such as needing to pause recordings while payment details are collected.

Building

Over a two-week period, Zing worked with Oxfam GB to:

• Enable payments via Twilio Pay on outbound calls
• Improve and streamline routes and prompts. For example, adding payment categories beyond ‘donation’, such as ‘sponsorship’ and ‘shop purchase’
• Implement address lookup to streamline data loading
• Bring all call recordings into one place

Oxfam GB agents now also use Agent Assisted Pay on Twilio’s PCI Compliant Voice Platform to securely collect payment information from callers. This enables agents to collect payments, while remaining in conversation with callers, all without having to build and maintain a dedicated PCI compliant payment infrastructure.

“Zing listened and questioned, in a good way! They were always actively trying to find the best solutions for us, they were always available and always prompt in their responses.

"Importantly, everything was transparent and they advised on the best use of our budget and capacity, laying out the wins and improvements for us to jump on,” says Jenny.

The result is a flexible and reliable call centre that is constantly being improved upon to better serve Oxfam GB’s wide supporter community.

“What we’ve built in phase two means everything takes place in Twilio. There is no longer any need to send emails asking for data to be updated. That saves many, many hours of agent and data team time”.

Oxfam GB now takes donations on outbound calls via Twilio Pay, and improved routing and prompts mean that agents only ask for the information that’s needed for specific payments, which greatly improves the overall experience.

When in-store payments are taken, the type of payment and store location is recorded without the need for manual amendment post-call.

“If you’re a local store making a big sale for example, you want that to be recorded and recognised appropriately, and we can now do that without all the added admin!”

The streamlining of data collection also means Oxfam GB has greater oversight of its day-to-day operations, including the causes that people are supporting, and how and when they're doing so.

The switch to Twilio Flex has been seamless and Oxfam GB has greatly streamlined its handling of support and volunteer calls. Call recordings, accuracy of data and customer experience have all been improved, and manual data amendment has been radically reduced.

Next

Looking forward, Zing will help Oxfam GB build dashboards to provide full oversight of daily operations in real-time. This will enable it to better monitor inquiry trends, call volumes, team productivity and more!