Crisis Services Canada

Saving lives with the world’s first virtualized national voice, text and chat-enabled suicide prevention service

In Canada, an average of 10 people take their lives through suicide every single day, with each death affecting more than 115 people with its immediate aftermath. Crisis Services Canada (CSC) wants to end that. Evolved from five regional separate distress centers, its goal is to turn negative situations into positive ones — saving people’s lives, providing suicide support for those affected and having a beneficial impact on the world around them.

To realize this vision, CSC embarked on a digital transformation journey, planned and delivered by 11 technology partners and supported by more than 1,000 trained suicide prevention volunteers. The aim was to build a nationwide virtual multimedia contact center that ensures no call or contact from anyone thinking about or affected by suicide ever goes unanswered. It also wanted to provide communication alternatives, such as voice, text and chat geared to the preference of the service users, with the ability to integrate clinical client data to improve overall quality of crisis support.

Benefits

  • Digital transformation completed on time and within budget
  • 25,073 contacts and 494 active rescues in the first 18 months
  • Disabled 2,407 suicide plans
  • Prevented tens of millions of dollars lost in social ROI value
  • 80% of help-seekers felt more able to cope with their situation

We were able to successfully integrate the Genesys/Rogers voice, text and chat contact center with the iCarol clinical CRM application. This resulted in award-winning technology that continues to help our trained responders save lives and provide suicide prevention and support coast-to-coast-to-coast.

Roberta J. Fox, Chief Innovation Officer, FOX Group Technology, former CEO and current Senior Management Technology Consultant, Crisis Services Canada

Challenges

  • Deliver lifesaving digital transformation of Canada’s distress and crisis call centers
  • Build and launch Canadian National Suicide Prevention Service overlaid on existing distress center infrastructure

Platform

Solutions

Partner

  • Rogers Communications Inc.