In late 2021, New Zealand was facing the reality that the Delta variant of COVID-19 would imminently arrive in the country. Reach Aotearoa (previously known as CBG Research) had already assisted the Ministry of Health to provide information and support to close contacts of COVID-19 cases, and with the number of cases anticipated to increase drastically in a matter of weeks, the Ministry urgently required a national case investigation service.

The service would support the important work of public health units (PHUs) in making initial contact with COVID-positive cases to provide information, evaluate any clinical needs, and link with manaaki support services.

This community contact meant calling many thousands of people every day, so Reach required a massively scalable, robust calling solution, and they needed a partner that could move fast to implement this solution and onboard the huge number of new staff needed to contact the skyrocketing COVID-positive cases.

Solution:

Reach partnered with contact centre technology specialist Digital Island (part of Spark Business Group) to stand up a calling solution that meant within only seven days, call centre agents were able to make and take calls.