The only call centre on RTÉ Does Comic Relief

Forty of our agents were the only call-centre team taking donation calls for RTÉ Does Comic Relief. In two and a half hours, they answered about 8,000 of roughly 10,000 incoming calls.

One team on the phone lines

There was no second call centre sharing the live donation calls. Our forty agents handled the phone response while the television event sent thousands of people towards the lines at once.

About 10,000 calls arrived during the two-and-a-half-hour rush. The team answered around 8,000 of them. That is more than fifty answered calls every minute across the room, sustained through the busiest part of the night.

ContactCentre.ie owner Rickie Doherty also appeared on the television coverage from the call centre while the team handled the lines.

The public response passed €5 million

The phone lines were one part of a much larger public response that also included online giving. Together, the event raised more than €5 million on the night. RTÉ later reported more than €5.5 million raised across the campaign.

We do not claim that every euro came through our agents. We claim the part that belongs to them: when the live phone response arrived, our forty people were the only call-centre team there to answer it.

The agents offered to do it for nothing

The forty agents offered to work the Comic Relief appeal for nothing because they wanted to help. I paid them anyway.

Their offer says something true about the team. Paying them says something equally important about my responsibility to them. A national charity appeal can depend on people’s goodwill without treating their work as worthless.

Forty experienced agents were enough

This is what capacity means to us. It is not a photograph of empty seats or a promise that hundreds of unknown callers could be found. It is forty proven people handling a national rush when missing a call meant missing somebody who wanted to give.

The technology had to stay up, the queue had to keep moving and every caller had to reach somebody who could complete the donation cleanly. The team did all three under live television pressure.

A real night belongs in the record

For years this sat in our experience rather than on our website. That made the website look younger and quieter than the company really was.

RTÉ Does Comic Relief is part of the public record. Our forty-agent phone team is part of our own operating record. Both belong together here because this is what the company has actually done.

The team has also handled Christmas FM fundraising work on several occasions.

Public campaign total: RTÉ's report on the money raised.