Do more people commit suicide in call centres and customer services than elsewhere?
Mental Health & Suicide Prevention Hotlines are being contacted on a massive scale, both in real life and in the movies. In the USA, 988 is overwhelmed, or should we say over-subscribed, according to CNN and the American press.
Two million calls in six months for 988 in the USA, an average waiting time of 44 seconds compared with two minutes last year and 350,000 calls forecast by Kader on 118318 in Tence, Auvergne, in a film to which Covid, Alexandre Simard* and Amazon Prime Video in particular have given a happy second life.
Opération 118318, sévices clients, the comedy co-written by David Azencot and Manuel Jacquinet (who is also the producer) about a call centre in disarray that its resourceful telesales staff save from receivership, has been viewed more than 2 million times since 2022 on Amazon Prime Video and YouTube. The hotlines (known as social telephony hotlines) that receive these calls or text messages are being contacted on a massive scale. How can they be financed and how can they provide a good service, given that in France, 3114 employs 100 callers and achieved a service rate of 70% in its first few months of operation. The State of Maryland alone delegates 140 multilingual operators to this service.
The call-centre saved by creating a telephone helpline for would-be suicides.
In the film, Booder plays Kader, a young telemarketer who manages to convince the Operations Manager, Ms Jarry, that the call centre's survival depends on signing new contracts. Taking calls for 118 318, a telephone information service, and setting up a suicide hotline are the two new services that the platform, based in Tence in the Haute-Loire, is going to launch, with the help of Kamilou in Benin. Kader has understood all there is to know about globalisation: 350,000 calls a month to receive and process don't scare him: he studied WFM (Work Force Management) in a quickly digested What Do I Know; so the solution is to team up with a BPO specialist in Africa. Kamilou and his teams lack more power than energy.
Alexandre Steiger is a confusing team leader, the CTO has Tourette's disease and Bruno Hausler, the new Chairman of Auvergne Téléservice, is a young banker and enarque who thinks that saving the call-centre will only take a few weeks. To re-motivate the team, Kader tells them the story of Les Verts and ASSE, which few of the agents know, nor do they recognise Dominique Bathenay, who is present at this team-building session.
A very complicated theatrical release: 3 lawsuits
The comedy, produced by 118 Productions, had to overcome a number of obstacles to reach cinemas, including chaotic distribution (organised by Artedis and the notorious Pierre-Richard Muller) and the threat of legal action from 118 218 etc. ‘I'm pleased that platforms such as Amazon and Webedia are offering it a second life,’ says its producer. I'm pleased that platforms such as Amazon and Webedia are giving it a second life,’ says its producer, “and above all that viewers” opinions are much more positive than those of Télérama. Le Monde and Le Canard Enchainé were the only two press titles not to go down in flames over our comedy. We must not have had the card. When the CNC asked us for a grant, they wrote to us, after a meeting of their allocation committee, that we were not renewing the cinematographic language in France. Some of the scenes in the film were shot on the premises of well-known outsourcers (service providers specialising in customer service, BPO and telesales), such as B2S in Gennevilliers (now Comdata), Webhelp in Rabat and at the offices of Vocalcom, then located on rue de Tilsitt.
In six months, 988 has been contacted more than 2 million times in the USA, by call, email, text or chat.
More than 200 dedicated telephone platforms (988 Mental Health & Suicide Helpline) handle these calls in the USA, with the platform based in Maryland alone employing 140 agents. In November 2022 alone, the 988 line (Suicide and Crisis Lifeline Prevention), which replaced 911, received 154,585 more contacts than over the same period the previous year, with a sharp increase in non-voice contacts (such as SMS and chat). Agents with a command of languages widely spoken in the USA, such as Spanish, are being hired (Suicido is the appropriate Hispanic term). The Democratic senator from Maryland, Malcolm Augustine, has proposed allocating an additional 12 million dollars to the service between now and 2025, given the need for staff and investment to cope with the volume of contacts received.
Hotlines for victims, battered women and psychosocial risk prevention have been widely developed over the years, but before they were based on these telephone platforms, SOS Amitié or Ménie Grégoire were already fulfilling more or less the same function (Allo Ménie). The telephone advisers are often referred to as listeners, a term they much prefer to all those who associate them with contact centres. 3114, which reports to the Ministry of Health, was set up in France in September 2021, is managed by Professor Pierre Thomas and has received an average of 345 calls a day in its first months of operation, with a service rate of just over 70%. According to our tests, 3114 responds faster than the average state-run public service. Reached this morning, at 9.10am on a Sunday, 3114 responded in 12 seconds, a better performance than that observed in the tax authorities' contact centres. (Study carried out by the En-Contact editorial team over the period December 2022-20 January 2023).
Rendez-vous: a special report on social telephony will appear in the next issue of Cahiers de l'Expérience Client: the patient experience is increasingly embracing the concepts, tools and methodologies being tested in remote customer relations, such as Voice and Speech Analytics.
The En-Contact editorial team.
*Alexandre Simard is the director of Factoris Films, the worldwide SVOD and DVD distributor of this film. Front page: Céline Forest, a customer service professional who has just taken up a new post at NW Groupe.