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In times of crisis, like the current COVID-19 pandemic, emergency responders and mutual aid providers have to be able to get communication out to large groups in a short time span.
For organizations, that communication needs to happen effectively across three audiences
- Seniors Members
- Younger members
- Volunteers.
Using phone calls to provide aid to seniors
With seniors, you have the highest chance of reaching them over phone calls. A call center campaign can be used to:
- Provide support for coping with anxiety and panic
- Address concerns and encourage best practices
- Help ascertain whether the caller needs to visit a doctor
- Assess the need for essential items
If you have a list of people you want to contact, upload them into CallHub and create a calling campaign. You can add survey forms that capture the above details and then filter those results to connect them to the right volunteers.
In case you don’t have access to volunteers who can make calls, use a voice broadcast to reach senior audiences and connect them to essential services.
With a voice broadcast, an initial pre-recorded message will share an update about the current situation and then ask the contact to press a digit depending on their requirement e.g.
Press 1 if you have a fever or cough
Press 2 if you need essentials
Press 3 if you need help procuring medication
Press 4 to speak to a volunteer
Both channels are effective for reaching seniors, but stick to live phone calls if you have access to volunteers to maintain a personal connection. For a lot of people, just talking to a person over the phone is all the help they’ll need at the moment.
Using texts to engage younger audiences
For younger audiences, shift your communication over to texting. People between ages 27 to 50 are more likely to respond over texts than a phone call. Peer to peer texting lets you engage large audiences over text through personalized conversations. Bear in mind that, while peer to peer texts are vastly more scalable than phone calls, you’ll still need a volunteer or staffer to handle the conversation.
Like a call center campaign, you can upload your list and set up surveys for volunteers to fill in during conversations.
Make sure you add templated responses that speed up volunteer responses to frequently asked questions.
Eg. How can it be treated?, How serious is COVID – 19?, Should I wear a facemask?
Issuing next steps to volunteers
Lastly, for volunteers, you want to be able to issue the next steps immediately. Send out a mass text and get them onto a video conference over an app like Zoom.
A sample message will look like this:
Hi James, our special briefing on COVID-19 is at 2pm today. We've emailed you details to join via video. Join 5 minutes before start time by clicking this link https://zoom.us/j/4447719206 or dial +6175550152 and enter 075907708# to participate with audio. Reply RSVP if you can make it. - Emily, NY Center
Once they reply with the keyword RSVP, send out a thank you message:
Awesome! Submit qs in advance at slido.com/nycntr_covid19 and we’ll try to answer it during the call. For more details on how NY Center is responding to the crisis visit: nycenter.org/covid-19.
Pay attention to a few important parts when you send the message:
- Insert video link
- Add a dial-in number — Not everyone is going to have access to a solid internet connection. Let them join via audio.
- Ask to join earlier — Ask volunteers to join a few minutes earlier so they have time to set up the video and audio by the time the meeting begins.
- Collect RSVPs — Ask volunteers who’re joining the call to RSVP. Send out a reminder 30 minutes before the call to let them know to join.
- Insert link to Q&A platform — Get the conversation going before the meeting by including a link to a Q&A platform like Slido.
I’ve gone into more detail about how you can achieve all of this in the above video.
CallHub is offering free access to our calling and texting tools for organizations doing COVID-19 emergency response. Our partners at NationBuilder are offering their tools for free too.
More resources:
- Curated resources for Organizers during a Crisis
- Co-ordinating emergency response using NationBuilder
- Using NationBuilder and CallHub together
How are you reaching out to your audience? Share in comments