Telephone family counselling service to be launched

An agreement signed yesterday by Jamal bin Obaid Al Bah, Director-General of the Marriage Fund and Mohamed Bamakhrama, Director-General of the Contract Centre outlined the details of the joint project and the role of each party as well as the profit that will be equally shared by Etisalat and the Marriage Fund from the paid service which is believed to be priced at three or four dirhams per minute, as announced by the official at a Press conference following the signing of the agreement.

"The new family counselling service would meet the needs of citizens seeking timely consultation on issues pertaining to social, psychological, family, youth and marriage problems,” said Mattar Humaid Al Tayer, Minister of Labour and Social Affairs and Chairman of the Marriage Fund. "The new service will contribute to resolving the family problems and identifying the main issues that UAE families face,” said Mr Al Tayer.

Elaborating, Mr Al Bah explained the objectives of the project which "will activate the preventive role of the fund in handling the social problems before they aggregate."

He said the project would enable the authorities to establish a database of the most significant social problems, as it will encourage both residents and citizens to come forward with their problems.

He said that in the beginning, eight highly qualified counsellors will be answering the queries of the callers, noting that a meeting will be organised with them later this week to familiarise them with the project and to train them.

"A high-level of secrecy will be ensured to provide the basic elements of success to this pioneering project. The project which will be implemented in three phases, the first to be introduced between mid-June and the beginning of July," said Mr Al Bah.

Among the common problems that might require counselling those pertaining to marriage such as the late marriage among women, the engagement period, fears of wedding night, inter-family relations, psychological problems of the partner, problems of working women. Other popular issues include the problems of the youth be them emotional, drug addiction, psychological suffering in addition to legal and religious matters.

The Contact Centre will provide the Marriage Fund with the IVR service. "Our core business is all about offering round the clock unmatchable customer service for Etisalat and for businesses and organisations in the UAE and the Middle East,” Mr Bamakhrama said.

Mohammed Junaid Azim, Marketing Analyst at Etisalat Contact Centre, said the service will be launched in three phases. The first is the normal service in which the caller calls 9000 number and select a category of five topics in level 1 and 2 of the menu, then the caller records the problem taking as much time as he needs and when that is done he receives a pin number on SMS if calling from a mobile and at the same time the problem is sent on SMS to the consultant. The caller can call back after 24 hours to receive an answer to his problem.

Dr Saif Al Ejlah of the Marriage Fund said that the answers will be precise, and up to the point. "However, if the consultant feels that the problem is complicated and needs direct contact, he can arrange for a meeting with the caller to further help him or her," he said adding that this might come at a later stage of the project.

The other type of IVR service to be introduced later is the urgent service in which an answer is given to the problem in eight hours and the third phase is the direct counselling where callers are given the chance to interact directly with the counsellors and not through SMS.