Deploying a Helpline in Under 2 Weeks Using Amazon Connect with the Irish Refugee Council

Founded in 1992, the IRC assists refugees and people seeking protection in Ireland. The organization provides information, integration support, and legal services alongside its advocacy work.

The IRC already had a helpline from another provider but needed a dedicated call center that was scalable and could connect directly to staff who spoke Ukrainian. It also wanted to provide a message service for after-hours contact and a web chat service for Ukrainians who couldn’t call while they were sheltering or in transit.

Because of its size, the organization hadn’t considered AWS technology until receiving a donation from AWS. After talking to AWS representatives, the IRC recognized that Amazon Connect was a robust solution. The IRC opted to work with TTEC Digital, an AWS Advanced Tier Services Partner with extensive experience building contact centers using AWS. The IRC outlined its requirements, and TTEC Digital handled the setup, deployment, and training.

The IRC and TTEC Digital launched the call center with enough functionality to meet basic requirements and then made it feature rich. The IRC completed the implementation an estimated five times faster using TTEC Digital’s accelerators, which use best practices that are based on proven customer success.

Since 2022, the IRC has directly assisted more than 4,000 Ukrainians in fleeing the war zone. Whether through the helpline or through web chat, these Ukrainians received clear and reliable information in their native language so they could quickly understand their eligibility, rights, housing options, and more. “It isn’t simple for someone to find credible information when they don’t speak the language, don’t know whom to trust, and are facing a huge disruption in their lives because of a war,” says Marianna O’Neill, Ukraine response lead at the IRC. “It was pivotal to give Ukrainians access to reliable, confidential, and trustworthy information.” The IRC impacts countless others using information gathered from the helpline. For example, it advocated for greater access to housing after seeing the volume of questions on this topic. In this way, the IRC continues to adapt to evolving needs.

Because Amazon Connect has a pay-as-you-go pricing model, the IRC can scale based on demand, which is often unpredictable in emergencies. Also, by using the cloud service, IRC staff can work remotely and from laptops.

Seeing this project’s success, the IRC plans to roll out Amazon Connect to its general helpline next. It also plans to send data from Salesforce, its customer relationship management tool, to Amazon Connect for a more personalized experience for staff and callers. “Amazon Connect works, even with only a laptop and a headset,” says O’Neill. “AWS is a company of true professionals who have a robust service.”