About Isolation Help Bexley (IHB)

Isolation Help Bexley are a group of volunteers in the London Borough of Bexley. The group was launched on 17 March 2020 in response to the looming COVID-19 Pandemic.

Our principal concern was that the elderly and vulnerable of Bexley, particularly those with no digital footprint, would find the necessity to isolate a significant challenge.

Simple tasks like collecting a prescription, buying a newspaper or walking a dog, suddenly attracted a degree of risk. Thankfully the fine people of Bexley quickly rose to the challenge and in the space of just over 2 months, every household in Bexley had received one of IHB’s flyers.

Over 800 Bexley residents joined IHB’s ranks and voluntarily provided practical help to many hundreds of elderly or vulnerable neighbours. One of the most difficult discoveries was just how many people were ‘isolated’ before there was a need to self isolate and so Bexley’s COVID legacy will be the birth of IHB.

On the hunt for a easy to use and cost effective phone system

"Cost was importance because we started with £0 and people who wanted to help"

Eugene volunteered as the IT manager for IHB because in his work life as a technical consultant he had vast experience planning, implementing and supporting the deployment of mobile devices to large organisations.

IHB needed a phone system that could handle high call volumes, be cost effective, be easy to use and implemented across the army of volunteers.

As a charity IHB started with no budget and only had people who just wanted to help, therefore when choosing a phone system it was imperative to have no contract, set up fees or any pricey hardware, lucky they found CircleLoop!

CircleLoop pledges 3 months free remote phone service to all UK schools, charities and healthcare providers and on going 20% discount

Back in early March when COVID forced the UK into lockdown CircleLoop made a pledge to give free accounts to any enterprises involved in the charity, health or education sector to help keep these industries going in these turbulent times.

Easy to implement and use

"We wanted just one number that could be used by our volunteers, we didn’t want multiple mobile numbers for people to contact. By having one number assigned to all the volunteers and the calls ring on multiple devices it meant calls are more likely to be answered."

CircleLoop allows you to assign multiple users to a team which was perfect for IHB as they wanted just one helpline for the charity to prevent confusion and limit the amount of missed calls.

Ensuring no one is left behind

CircleLoop has many useful features, one in particular that was greatly valued by IHB was the SMS function that allowed them to communicate with the hearing impaired, ensuring no one was left out.

"The hearing impaired whether they are a volunteer or resident can still communicate via CircleLoop"

Set up and go with CircleLoop

"Setting up and training the volunteers to use CircleLoop was simple, now they just login and use it, no complaints!"

As Isolation Help Bexley is run by solely volunteers they needed the phone system to be low maintenance. The CircleLoop interface is designed to be simple and has proved popular with all volunteers.

Top marks for the customer service

"I rate the customer success team 6/5 couldn’t have been more impressed with the service we received, especially in the early days because even though it was provided to us for 3 months we were still treated like paying customers.

The customer success team seems like an interactive team that are actually interested in the success of CircleLoop, unlike a large corporation where they take your money and run."