Telephone-answering services

Tender description

The purpose of this Prior Information Notice (PIN) is to engage with the market with a view to shape the procurement of a contact centre service for DfE, which will support the recruitment of those who are interested in becoming a teacher or in returning to the teaching profession. The Get into Teaching Information Service is a critical part of DfE strategy for recruiting sufficient teachers throughout England. This is in preparation to procure the contact centre service in early 2018. We are seeking advice from the market as part of our commissioning review to examine the opportunities available to DfE in order to provide a fresh look at how the service is delivered. This will establish better and more innovative ways of supporting people into teaching, and secure the best value for money. We value the views of the supply chain and are therefore requesting information to assist our scoping of the procurement. This is not an invitation to bid, it is solely a request for information. No direct business will be awarded as a result of completing this Request for Information (RFI). Responding to this RFI will not advantage or disadvantage any supplier in the future procurement. Organisations that are interested in this anticipated opportunity are invited to attend a Market Engagement Webinar on 14 December and to respond to an RFI questionnaire. DfE then plans to hold one-to-one surgeries with the relevant interested parties. This will assist DfE to gain a greater understanding of the market and of potential solutions to shape the service and any contract that it will procure. Reservations to attend the Market Engagement Webinar on 14.12.2017 should be made through our event page: https://www.eventbrite.co.uk/e/get-into-teaching-information-service-market-engagement-webinar-tickets-40145553431 Ticket reservation will be available until 11:30 on 13.12.2017. The RFI and a market engagement information pack will be posted to the DfE e-Procurement Solution portal, Bravo Solution on Wednesday 29.11.2017. The supply of sufficient high quality teachers is vital to the wellbeing of the nation. DfE supports the recruitment of teachers with above — and below-the-line marketing campaigns, and an information and support service that seeks to convert interest in teaching into applications for teacher training. There are two elements to the information and support service — a contact centre service and an enhanced one-to-one candidate support service that is for candidates that want to teach subjects that are a recruitment priority. The contact centre that DfE plans to procure will provide support, advice and guidance to inbound contacts via channels including telephone, web chat, email and social media. It will also provide outbound services for DfE's marketing campaign for teacher recruitment via various channels including telephone, email and SMS. Last year, the service handled around: — 67 000 inbound calls — 46 000 web chats — 166 000 call dials — 580 000 SMS and 4 000 000 outbound marketing emails. The enhanced one-to-one support element of the service that DfE provides is currently delivered by phone and email by advisors who are former teachers. These advisors are currently home-based workers and are located throughout England. They have additional responsibilities under the service including to provide ambassadorial support at DfE's teacher recruitment events throughout the UK and they work with educational establishments that are involved in initial teacher training. The enhanced advisor service supported around 10,000 priority subject candidates last year. In order to have better control over the strategically important data on its ‘customer-base’ and align better to good marketing practices, DfE plans to use an industry standard Customer Relationship Management (CRM) package to help run the service and to enable the successful bidder to optimise conversion. DfE is seeking to achieve an innovative solution that will ensure the effectiveness, efficiency and economy of the service.