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END THE PHONECALL NIGHTMARES CAMPAIGN NOW LIVE
Today, on International Stammering Awareness Day, we're launching our ‘End the Phone Call Nightmares’ campaign.
We want any business that takes calls from the public to do our free, online training and adapt their ways of working. That way we can stop the phone call nightmares and people who stammer can make calls without being hung up on, misunderstood, rushed or laughed at. And without getting stuck in Automatic Speech Recognition systems that don’t accommodate stammered speech.
Organisations have a legal duty to anticipate and act on the needs of disabled customers so they can access services. That includes over the phone. And that includes people who stammer.
THE CAMPAIGN
This is a comprehensive campaign which will be sustained over the next year and is part of STAMMA's 'Space to Stammer' strategy to embed long term institutional change, supported by the National Lottery.
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A report based on the experiences of over 356 people who stammer, looking at their experiences of making a call to a business. 65% of those calls were mishandled because of either the training or accessibility issues. The report ends with recommendations for anyone taking calls from the public.
- JCDecaux UK will be showing ads on digital screens around the UK this week.
- Pearl & Dean will be showing the 30 second ad in cinemas nationwide, screenshot above.
- Free training workshops for businesses are available for booking, and will run for the next 12 months.
- As part of the campaign STAMMA are now recruiting volunteer advocates to present to businesses and work with them to institute new practices.
The advertising is the work of Iris Worldwide who have been working pro bono with STAMMA, with production of the cinema ad by Joseph Mann, an award-winning director at BlinkInk.
CEO, Jane Powell said "An astonishing 98% of those we surveyed said they find it hard to make a call to business. Nearly 1 in 7 were hung up on, on their last call. 24% got stuck on Automatic Speech Recognition systems. This is basic. If you expect the public to talk to you via the phone, then you have a legal duty to consider the needs of people who stammer".
At least 550,000 adults in the UK stammer, which, according to Contact Babel, the leading analyst firm for the contact centre industry, equates to at least 43 million calls made by adults who stammer every year, accounting for the fact that people who stammer try and avoid making phone calls.
Key findings from the Report include:
- 32% had their words guessed or assumed in their last call to a business
- 31% were talked over
- 24% had problems with the Interactive Voice Response (IVR) system
- 14% were actively hung up on
Notes to Editors
45 million calls is based on an estimate taking a 32% to 68% voice to digital figure, against UK overall of 68% voice, 32% digital, this gives 43.5m voice calls, according to Contact Babel.
Based on the assumption that at least 1% of all adults stammer, current ONS data would indicate that there are 550,223 adults who stammer in the UK (MYE1: Population estimates: Summary for United Kingdom, mid-2024; plus Population estimates - local authority based by single year of age) based on a total population of 55,022,253 adults aged 18 and over.
Additional data from a YouGov poll, conducted 24th Oct - 1st Nov 2024. Net 35% of 510 adults working in the call centre industry answered ‘likely’ to silence being the reason a caller got stuck on their words.
