Helpline Transfer Support FAQs

The UK Gambling Commission Customer Interaction Guidance for remote operators refers to ‘hot’ transfers to help and support for customers requiring strong or stronger action from operators.

Our service is called the ‘warm’ transfer service because transfers can be offered for customers at varying levels of harm – it is not reserved for only those experiencing severe harm.

Our training makes clear to staff the wide range of situations that an offer of a transfer would be appropriate.

The Helpline operates in England, Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland. However, the Helpline offers a slightly reduced service in Northern Ireland. For example, we don’t offer treatment to adults in Northern Ireland but we can refer into local services, which include Gamblers Anonymous, Dunlewey and Cul Mhair. In Northern Ireland, we do offer treatment support for under 18s, access to GamCare website resources, as well as TalkBanStop.

Multiple brands within one group of organisations can make warm transfers under one shared licence. It is important to confirm every brand name and every number they will make transfers from, so that our reporting can accurately attribute our call information to your licence.

The service does not require any technical integration between call handling systems, making it quick and easy to operationalise.

We do require that:

• Call recordings will cease when the transfer is complete
• Any call charges applicable to your phone line that will apply to a transferred customer are identified to GamCare and communicated to the customer each time a transfer is made

These will be flagged during your test transfers, so we recommend starting the testing phase as soon as possible.

We ask that you do at least one test transfer from each different call handling system your organisation uses. If you are unsure how many systems your organisation uses, your IT team should be able to advise on the level of testing required to ensure a full/consistent test of the system.

1. We recommend setting up internal monitoring systems as best-practice, to track the number of attempted transfers and to monitor feedback from your staff about the process. It is not a requirement however, and it will not impact our ability to report back to you on the volume, quality and outcome of calls. Our Helpline data is matched to your organisation by using the number displaying in our call handling system when you make a transfer.

   Some of the best practice we have seen is to record instances of a warm transfer being offered, then whether that offer was accepted or rejected, the reasons for the rejection and then reflections on whether there was anything the staff member or organisation could have done differently.

The Helpline Transfers Hub eLearning is the only required training for staff. Staff cannot make transfers until they have completed the training, and it’s your responsibility to ensure they do it.

The Helpline Transfers Hub eLearning can be accessed through a link which GamCare sends via email.

The National Gambling Helpline is not a crisis Helpline; customer care staff cannot transfer customers at immediate risk of harm. Instead, staff need to follow their organisation’s safeguarding procedures.

You do not have to be signed up to the Helpline Transfer Service to give someone information about contacting the National Gambling Helpline. We encourage all gambling businesses to make customers aware about the different support services out there, and the many ways they can speak to an Adviser:

• Call the National Gambling Helpline for free, 24/7, 365 on 0808 8020 133
• Use our Live Chat service via our website: gamcare.org.uk/get-support/talk-to-us-now
• Speak to our Helpline via WhatsApp on 020 3031 8881. (Mobile Only)

We can only issue quarterly reports if the threshold for transfers has been met. If you haven’t received a report this quarter, we will wait until the following quarter to issue a report, assuming the threshold has been met at this stage.

You may want to establish some internal reporting systems to track transfer rates in real time, without the need to wait for our report.

Depending on how quickly you can roll out the training staff, and if the test transfers work smoothly, we expect organisations to be set-up to make transfers within a month.