The Royal Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals (RSPCA) has expanded its use of online communications by using email management customer service technology from customer interaction management offerings provider Eptica.
The world’s oldest and largest animal welfare charity said that the new technology, which allows people to report cases through the RSPCA website, helped it speed up response times from 2 days down to 20 minutes.
Registered users can report animal cruelty cases at My RSPCA.
The RSPCA said that with reports that animal cruelty is at an all time high, responding to online enquiries would help it to investigate more cases and ultimately save the lives of more animals.
Enquiries sent through the RSPCA website are now automatically scanned, prioritised and sent through to the right people to action.
The RSPCA said that it received hundreds of enquiries through its website from animal lovers wanting to know what the charity was doing to help animal cruelty cases including Anne the circus Elephant and the cat bin lady.
It added the new system enabled prompt response to all these queries and keep people up to date with the charity’s achievements as the elephant’s move to Longleat Safari Park was secured.
The RSPCA information and advice manager Veronica Morrison said over the last few years the organisation has seen a massive growth in the number of people contacting it online.
"Eptica’s technology allows us to investigate and process all the cases reported on our website, quickly and efficiently. Being able to better manage the thousands of enquiries we receive every year helps us to save more animals. It’s as simple as that!," Morrison said.
The RSPCA is also regularly contacted for more general pet health and behavioural advice.
The charity said that since deploying the UK-based Eptica’s Email Management tool in January, the online response times for veterinary advice has fallen from seven days to two hours, and for pet care and behavioural advice it has plummeted from 32 days to less than one hour.
Eptica European marketing director Dee Roche said, "It’s great to see the organisation harnessing the power of Web customer service technology to connect with supporters and ultimately save more animals in need."
The RSPCA has been looking out for animals since 1824. It has 170 branches and in 2010 alone the charity investigated 159,686 cruelty complaints and collected and rescued 130,033 animals.
