Recording the publics generosity

The Disasters and Emergency Committee are responsible for managing the response of the UK to appeals for donations. Usually this entails organising call centres to receive live calls from those wishing to make a pledge but when the Asian Tsunami struck, the unprecedented response by the general public was not anticipated. The Boxing Day timing of the crisis also meant that most call centres were closed and those that were operational were quickly overwhelmed. Quick action was required to ensure suffering was minimised.

ndata was immediately ready to assist with processing the overflow and IVR equipment was utilised to record each donor’s name, address and credit card information. Bespoke audio transcription data entry formats were written with comprehensive validation of data fields including PAF for addresses and algorithm checks for credit card details. To increase security and efficiency individual audio recordings were split into groups of 'audio fields'. The first group contained the forenames from many records; the second group only surnames etc and one operative would only work within one group. This meant that credit card information could not be related to an individual or address. The fifty specialists in audio transcription worked for two months allowing The Disasters and Emergency Committee to collect donations from over 300,000 donors.

Every year the BBC run Children in Need and again ndata’s resources are fundamental to the success of transcribing the donation calls. We also transcribe competition entries, brochure request lines and all forms of meetings as well as recorded interviews.