FAQs

We make your phone/chat/text hotlines work the way you want.

Helpline Software provides an integrated call forwarding, chat & text and scheduling system that manages many of the logistics of running a 24h phone system, so that your agency can focus on serving your clients.

This includes quickly routing calls to your personnel, protecting them from obscene callers and burnout, protecting caller privacy, simplifying data analytics, enforcing your high volume repeat caller policies (if any), and much more.

Unlike human answering services or call center systems, we were built for reliable and high volume call forwarding and work with your counterparts every day. That means, we understand your unique workflows, can share how similar customers solve similar problems, and always follow to your exact instructions.

With Helpline Software, the only people that will ever speak to your callers are your personnel.

In fact, we’ve identified that agencies that use human answering services to forward calls may experience significantly more human error than they realize. We recommend that you try the hotline audit to see what’s actually happening on your line.

We’ve helped agencies around the country solve their 24/7 phone, text, or chat related challenges, and one thing that we’ve learned is that the only people qualified to talk to your callers is your trained personnel. For this reason, Helpline Software never uses 3rd party operators to answer/field calls.

Yes! You can configure how much time each individual has to answer calls. We even provide simplified presets, for example – agencies that want calls to be answered quickly can choose the “We’ll Answer Quickly” preset.

It can be remarkably difficult to configure this setting in other phone system. We’ve seen even small errors in ring time leading to major consequences in terms of hold time for callers and burnout for agency personnel if this is done incorrectly.

In more detail,

1. You can customize how long your personnel will have enough time to pick up the phone
2. How long personnel have to get to a quiet place before connecting the caller
3. Details to ensure your personnel have enough context to answer each call before they connect with the caller 

Absolutely!

You Hold times are entirely dependent on your agency, your policies, and how quickly your on-call advocates answer calls.

In practice, callers can be on hold for as little as a few seconds before they are connected to the on-call individual that can support them. You will be provided with detailed data in real time that you can use to fine tune your policies and hold times to balance needs of the caller as well as those of your agency and its on-call advocates.

Yes! Complex schedules and escalation orders is a standard part of our call forwarding service. We’ve never seen a case we can’t handle, and invite you to contact sales with any specific questions.

Nearly everything. 

Our talented personnel will work with you to identify your unique needs and design a custom system just for you. We invite you to contact sales with any specific questions.

We provide fully customized call forwarding services, chat and text, scheduling, and everything you need to replace your answering service with that meets your exact needs.

We offer so many special features that it wouldn’t make sense to try to list them here. New special features are typically based on best practices we’ve refined from working with your counterparts, and are typically released for free to all of our customer agencies.

The best way to learn more about them is to schedule a meeting with us and share the specific problem that you’re looking to solve. Chances are other agencies have expressed similar concerns, and that we either have already built special features for that, or have something planned.

As an example, some (but not all) agencies want special features to enforce boundaries with very specific extremely high volume repeat callers that do not need service. We have features to do that. Are you looking for something for inappropriate caller protection or a shift request approval process to be integrated with your system? We’ve got those too, and yes it’s free with your contract.

Need something else? Just schedule a meeting here. It’s possible we’ve already got something just for you.

Yes, and support is included with all of our plans. The CEO of HOPE Sheds Lights, Inc said that “… customer service is responsive, honest, articulate, … it’s top-notch …”. She’s not the only one. After you meet with us you can talk to our references, please ask them about this! We’re excited for you to speak with them.

Yes, it’s even better than that. This is our Peace Of Mind Guarantee:

If Customer cancels this contract within 30 days after Go-Live by written notice then Company will return Customer’s deposit and donate $500 to Customer. Offer void if not used within 90 days of the Effective Date, and 30 days of Go-Live. Void where prohibited. No cash value unless required by law. Only active US-based 501(3)(c) nonprofit organizations qualify. Limit one per organization.

Updates to your shift schedule will instantaneously change the forwarding for all calls, chats and texts. No need to call anyone or send an email. Once you click save it’s there, and it’s working.

You’ll even be able to see that happen in real-time.

Calls sent to your personnel will always come from the same number, unless you configure your Helpline Software otherwise. This has a few advantages:

1. Your personnel will know they’re receiving a call from your hotline before they pick up.
2. Your  personnel will not have access to the caller’s phone number, unless you give them access, or forward that caller-id.

Sure thing. When you reach out please provide the following:

1. Are there any specific key challenges you want us to address? Some common ones are how can we better execute on our language access plans, crisis line burnout prediction, crisis line burnout prevention, privacy, privacy, how to start chat & text, how to manage efficient callbacks, …
2. Is this a vendor specific or vendor neutral talk? We do both.
3. How many people are expected to be in the audience?

Please note that we don’t officially provide any “best practices”. We simply share the pros and cons of what works at other crisis phone, chat, or text lines. Something that’s a best practice for one community may not be for another.

Please send an email to <sales@helplinesoftware.com> with any questions that have come up so far, and please book a meeting here so that we can understand the scope of the project that you are considering, and take the next steps to making sure your community can get the service they need quickly and in a trauma-informed way.