Lithys 2018: Cancer Council - Social Support Champion

Lithys 2018: Cancer Council - Social Support Champion

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Company: Cancer Council

Company background: Cancer Council believes in a cancer-free future. There are things that we can all do every day to help make this happen.

Every year in NSW alone, more than 48,000 new cases of cancer are expected to be diagnosed, and the impact on families, carers and communities is significant. Together with our volunteers, supporters, stakeholders and staff, we are committed to reducing the impact of cancer on individuals and the community, and to lessening the burden for people affected by cancer.

Cancer Council embraces new and innovative ways for people to seek information and support through digital and online conversations. The Cancer Council Online Community is an online platform for anyone affected by cancer – including people with cancer, survivors, families and carers – to connect, share experiences and find information and support in a safe forum.

The Online Community complements existing Cancer Council information and support services outside of business hours, connecting people with each other in real time, regardless of when or where they seek support or information.

Related URLs: https://onlinecommunity.cancercouncil.com.au/

Lithy category: Social Support Champion

1. What were your organization’s social customer service initiatives in 2017-2018?

Our key objectives for 2017/18 were:

  • To increase the reach of the Cancer Council Online Community and access to information and support for people via digital channels.
  • To provide a space from which to provide emotional peer support and reduce isolation for people affected by cancer.
  • Increase access to online information and peer support for people caring for someone affected by cancer.


2. What was the most important customer issue you were looking to solve via your digital technology (e.g. community and/or social media management platform)? What makes your approach to customer satisfaction a gold standard in the industry?

With the re-launch of the Cancer Council Online Community in November of 2016, building awareness of the Online Community was a priority, along with identifying the types of support and information people were seeking when visiting the site.

The following year was spent evaluating the Online Community to identify what was working well and what was not, with a view to further improving user experience without compromising this safe environment for people affected by cancer.

The evaluation process, including a user survey, was completed and reported on the following results, amongst others:

  • Some users were based in rural locations and highlighted the benefit of being in contact with a community to reduce social isolation and gain support, resulting in users having a really positive experience on the Online Community.
  • There appeared to be some registration issues which resulted in incomplete registrations and frustration for users.

Heat mapping was performed for a 3 week period in mid-2017 to gain an understanding of high and low activity areas on the website, demonstrating what content is accessed most frequently. This identified clear high traffic areas of the site, as well as areas that were underutilised and in some cases, redundant.

As a result of both our site analysis and our evaluation, we embarked upon a site-wide project with the team at Lithium that included a significant redesign of our existing homepage, general tweaks to improve member experience throughout the community and a vastly improved and simplified registration flow.

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We also redesigned our information and resource page for carers to include more support services, as well as information for Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Peoples, and resources for those whom English may not be their native language. 

Media awareness campaigns were released during the festive season. This season brings joy to most people, but for people affected by cancer it can pose many challenges with feelings of loneliness, isolation and sadness very common. During this period, we put out a press release highlighting the 24/7 always-on nature of the Cancer Council Online Community, available from any device and that we are still able to provide vital support when more traditional services are shut down during the holiday period. This article appeared in several regional newspapers, including the Manning River Times and the Coffs Coast Advocate.

We also ran a social media campaign during the festive period, to increase awareness of the Online Community for people who may be caring for someone with cancer and to assist people, especially for those who may not consider themselves as a carer, to seek any support they may require.

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From February 2018, the Cancer Council Online Community was included in the national campaign for Cancer Council 'Every minute, Every hour, Every day' which highlights just a few of our support services available.  This is shown in the following:


3. Please share customer satisfaction metrics, both qualitative and quantitative, as well as agent and response time metrics (e.g. CSAT, decreased customer complaints, call deflections, agent SLA, manual processes eliminated)

The results speak for themselves:

  • 170,266 pageviews (an increase from 113,142 in 16/17)
  • 42,380 unique visitors (an increase from 20,246 in 16/17)
  • 5,634 total registered members

The level of overall engagement in the past 6 months has significantly increased. People are sharing their stories and experiences, seeking support and we’re seeing people returning time and time again to support others through their experiences.

The following video is another from the national campaign and features one of our long term members Ben, who used the Online Community during his cancer diagnosis and treatment, now returning regularly to help support others going through their own experiences:

Comments

Well done!