Lecture ,,Frequent callers”
On wednesday, 27th of May, counselor working at the National Call Center for Victims of Crime, Ivana Andrijašević, gave an online lecture as a part of an online series of lectures held by National Call Center’s team. Subject of the lecture was „Frequent callers“ and was presented through Zoom platform as well as the Facebook streaming platform, a total of 45 participants participated in the lecture through both of these platforms.
At the beginning, the lecturer presented the National Call Center and the motivation for holding a lecture about frequent callers as they are a type of caller that most helplines have experience with. The lecturer asked the participants about their experiences in working on helplines and if they have had any experience with frequent callers. According to the responses, over 80% of the participants were persons with relevant experience.
The lecturer opened the lecture with an introduction to the topic and an explanation of who frequent callers are, how they are defined by helplines, and what research says about some of their common characteristics. Afterwards, the lecturer talked about how frequent callers affect helplines and helpers who receive their calls, focusing on feelings of inadequacy and frustration often mentioned by helpers in the literature. Afterwards, the lecturer talked about the practices that different helplines implement when dealing with frequent callers, highlighting the advantages and disadvantages of these practices. At the end, the lecturer presented the practice that has proven to be the most successful in the literature and includes the involvement of callers in the agreement on the regulation of further calls. The lecturer explained in detail what such an agreement would look like and what a further relationship with that caller would look like.
The lecture lasted 55 minutes, after the lecture some of the participants shared their experiences of working on different helplines, proving once again that frequent callers are one topic that is common to helpers on such helplines.
