Combatting chronic loneliness: Age UK volunteers in the spotlight

Nearly a million older people in the UK are often lonely, according to national charity Age UK.

Age UK is committed to tackling persistent loneliness through volunteer-led initiatives including the Telephone Friendship Service (TFS),which matches isolated older individuals with volunteers for weekly chats.

Twilio is proud to provide the technology behind the TFS as well as the Silver Line Helpline, Age UK’s 24-hour telephone service. By enabling more reliable, seamless conversations, the Twilio Flex platform helps ensure these interactions feel consistent and dependable, strengthening trust between Age UK and the people they support.  

To get a better understanding of how Twilio Flex supports these initiatives, we asked a selection of anonymous volunteers to tell us about their experiences using the platform.

Helping people in need

Every volunteer will have their own reasons for choosing to donate their time to Age UK, whether compelled by personal experience or just wanting to give back to the community. As one volunteer put it, ‘I wanted to give my time with a charity that cared about people’. Another was more inspired by the recipients themselves, saying ‘I wanted to be able to understand older people better, hearing their stories and wisdom’.

Whatever the reason, thankfully there’s no shortage of people wanting to sign up. In fact, the flexibility of Twilio Flex – meaning volunteers can be fully remote – has significantly boosted the number of volunteer applications for the Silver Line Helpline, with an increase of 242% from 2020.

Enabling deep connections

Age UK’s helplines work slightly differently to typical commercial customer service or sales lines, requiring extra features for their staff, volunteers, and callers. Particularly important was the need to ensure callers felt safe, enabling volunteers to build meaningful connections. This meant bringing together all telephone services into a single platform with Zing, making doing so easier and more convenient. Specifically, these volunteers told us how Twilio Flex helped them to deliver a better experience:

• Ensuring clear communication. Call quality needs to be crystal clear at all times to help volunteers effectively hear and understand callers. It’s also critical for volunteers to listen out for safeguarding concerns. ‘Sometimes we’re the only people that our members or older people can talk to, so it’s really important we’re able to listen uninterrupted, without the fear that we lose connection,’ one volunteer reported.
• Helping volunteers in emergencies. When a caller has an unexpected health problem or is experiencing suicidal ideation, volunteers can transfer them across to 111, 999 or Samaritans to get them urgent care. ‘I know that my line manager can also listen in live to any difficult calls, so that we can collaborate to make sure older people are safe and I can get advice in live situations, if I’m not sure on the best course of action,’ our volunteer confirmed.
  
• Building trust between callers and volunteers. Because Twilio Flex is cloud-based, volunteers can safely and securely connect with callers from the comfort of their own homes, resulting in near-constant uptime and trustworthy service. ‘Twilio always having a reliable service makes sure our members know they can trust they’ll be able to speak to us when they need to, and feel confident that their calls will go ahead each week,’ noted one volunteer.

Tackling chronic loneliness one conversation at a time

As well as helping older people, volunteers also hugely benefit from the TFS, as it can lead to long-term friendships. As one volunteer noted, ‘we have volunteers and members who have been matched together for over 10 years – it really can change everything!’.

With Twilio Flex, volunteers don’t have to worry about the technology in the background, leaving them able to concentrate solely on their callers and their impact on chronic loneliness. When asked what message they’d send to older people who are currently struggling, one volunteer highlighted just how significant this impact can be: ‘I’d recommend calling us if they have been feeling lonely; so many of our members say that having a call to look forward to each week has changed their lives’.

Find out more about how Twilio Flex supports Age UK volunteers with building meaningful connections and combatting chronic loneliness.