DHU Healthcare

Customer Overview

A not-for-profit organisation, DHU HealthCare was once a Derbyshire-based out-of-hours GP service. Over the last thirty years, however, the organisation has grown immensely to over 3,000 staff. It now provides round-the-clock, high-quality healthcare for more than ten million people across the UK and spans an incredibly diverse range of important healthcare services.

As part of the NHS frontline, DHU leads urgent care within Emergency Departments, Urgent Treatment Centres, GP, Primary Care Surgeries, and also out in communities. The organisation works in collaboration with partners and colleagues across NHS systems, GP federations, and other private providers, offering innovative, integrated solutions that ensure patients and communities have access to the right care, in the right place, at the right time.

DHU is also at the heart of the national NHS 111 first service – responding to 2.4 million calls a year, while continuing to support the London Ambulance Service with non-urgent calls.

Service Challenges

Due to the nature of DHU Healthcare’s work, which transcends the ‘usual’ 9am–5pm working hours, DHU sought an IT service desk partner that could deliver 24/7 support.

Naturally, it’s essential that staff at DHU have constant access to their IT services so they, in turn, can provide patients with urgent healthcare when they need it.

Should one system go down, or an IT issue occur, DHU employees require an instantaneous response from a knowledgeable and rapidly responsive IT service provider in order to get back to work assisting the communities and patients that need help most.

It was important for DHU not to feel constrained in terms of when they could speak to a service desk engineer to help fix problems, but also how long it would take to find a resolution to everyday IT issues. To this end, DHU engaged with Littlefish to deliver much-needed user experience improvements and an empathetic, people-centric service desk support function.

An ‘always on’ solution from Littlefish

Littlefish were able to demonstrate technical capability as well as offer DHU 24/7 IT service desk support.

The organisation was additionally impressed with Littlefish’s collaborative, transparent ethos and omnichannel service desk capability (phone, chat, email, and self-service) as well as Littlefish’s innovative pod system, which ringfences proportionate, dedicated teams of engineers based upon each organisation’s unique business requirements.

The Littlefish solution would address DHU’s service desk challenges in three key areas:

• Improve IT customer service: improve the service users at DHU receive along with incident resolution speed through expanded service hours, self-service capabilities, and highly skilled service desk staff.
• Improve efficiency: improve efficiency and effectiveness by working with DHU to understand their unique business needs and through monthly review meetings.
• Improve effectiveness: improve effectiveness by early identification and addressing of root causes of technical Incidents.

Positive Outcomes

After working with Littlefish’s service desk, DHU are pleased to report a first-contact resolution (FCR) rate of 85% (and improving), along with survey and satisfaction results well above industry standard for healthcare organisations.

Additionally, through feedback collected via the Littlefish service desk, as well as regular monthly service reviews between key stakeholders at DHU and Littlefish, DHU report a highly positive experience overall and are especially impressed with Littlefish’s level of engagement and time spent understanding the nature of their work.