Contact&Connect Case Study
Medway Council and their use of Contact&Connect to drive the return of community loan equipment
BACKGROUND
In 2024, Medway Council wanted to engage more pro-actively with people who had been prescribed equipment to support them living independently and safely at home. Having seen the success of the Contact&Connect approach in other council areas, Medway was keen to deploy automated telephony to drive the return of equipment to deliver savings, make better use of the existing equipment as well as ensure people were safe and managing well at home.
THE CHALLENGE
With hundreds of thousands of items loaned to people in the community, keeping on top of when items are no longer required, when people don’t use or want them any more, if someone’s circumstances have changed, if something is broken or someone is unsure how to use it, is a big, ongoing, resource intensive task.
WHAT IS CONTACT&CONNECT: COMMUNITY LOAN RECALL?
Contact&Connect is an automated telephony platform co-designed by councils to engage with people who draw on their care and support services. Contact&Connect: Community Loan Recall has a clear purpose – to drive the return of ‘loaned’ items once they are no longer required. Too often items go missing, are given to friends or family, end up in charity shops, the tip or on online reselling sites, leading to increased costs to the council. Now moving into its 5th year, over £1.5million of equipment has been directly returned due to the automated calls.
WHY CONTACT&CONNECT
Telephone calls remain the easiest and most accessible way to keep in touch with people. With calls going through to both landlines and mobiles, we are able to leverage not only voice calls (scheduled to fit in with contact centre availability), but also leave voice messages and (on mobiles) send texts and share web links. People do not need to be digitally literate, we can also create scripts to go to carers, advocates or family members. Across the board we are seeing between 60-75% response rates, with response data available in cloud based dashboards within minutes of the calls going out.
IMPLEMENTATION & SUPPORT
Having worked with Medway’s team to co-design the questions to be asked, as well as colleagues at Medequip to ensure their contact centre team understood the process and call response data, the calls began. The first call was scheduled to go out to people 7 days after they received their equipment, to check that everything had been received and they knew how to use the equipment. The second call was scheduled 3 months later, to check that they still needed the equipment, nothing was broken and they were able to use it safely. Calls now continue to go out to people who still have their equipment every 3 months.
“Calls are nicely balanced, it’s been really good from a resource perspective”
OUTCOMES
Across the first 6 months of the Contact&Connect service, Medway were already achieving the following:
- 73% response rate to the calls and texts
- Nearly 10,000 calls have been automatically generated by the platform
- 581 (19% of people) requesting to return equipment saving Medway £3,094 per week
- Colleagues at Medequip can directly attribute £86,833.97 of equipment returned to the automated calls (Oct ‘24- April ‘25)
- Over 100 people confirming they had broken equipment
- Another 100 people confirming they did not feel safe using their equipment
- And 377 people confirming they no longer had the equipment
“This is a great return on investment”
LOOKING AHEAD
Medway Council has now built Contact&Connect into their new 5 year contract with Medequip, committing to continue with the service due to the clear impact and success.
“We get a range of high and low value equipment returned, more high value items than we expected”
