HCL's Covid-19 response centre gets 250,000 queries, 60% related to food

HCL's 24x7, Integrated Control Centre for Covid-19 in Gautam Buddha Nagar has responded to close to 250,000 citizen queries since its launch in April, and majority of the calls it received were related to food.

The "all-in-one" control room, which can be reached on toll free number 18004192211, was set up by HCL at one of its facilities in Noida, with support from the GB Nagar district administration, the police, the health department and both Noida Authority and Greater Noida Authority.

Majority of the calls, as much as 60 per cent, received by the helpline have been food related with callers requesting for information on ordering groceries online or dry ration and cooked meals support.

The Control Room also responded to 15 per cent queries related to health services, including questions around e-pass for hospital visits, ambulance related services and pharmacy options. About 21 per cent of the total calls were related to other queries including information on masks and sanitizer availability, ATM accessibility etc. Remaining 4 per cent calls were related to the police.

“The “ultra-modern” control centre in GB Nagar, supported by HCL, has been playing a critical role in ensuring that correct information and support is timely available to the citizens during these very difficult times. The HCL team not only helped set up this centre in less than 72 hours (back in April), but have also extended high quality response and data analysis consistently, helping us devise the right response strategies”, said District Magistrate, Suhas L Y.

Keeping the social distancing norms in place, HCL employees have been supporting the call centre operations from their respective homes. The centre’s focus has also been on screening callers and queries before referring them to a team of doctors appointed by the government for further course of action. Of the total health-related calls, 12 per cent were referred for doctor consultation.

The control centre also included processes for following up and reporting of all unconfirmed, suspected, foreign returned cases as well as mobile tracking and monitoring for all home quarantine cases basis inputs from official government authorities.

“At HCL, we have always taken our responsibility towards the nation seriously and therefore, we pulled together all resources to set up this Integrated Control Centre for the District Administration of Gautam Buddha Nagar. I am thankful to the district administration to allow us an opportunity to extend this critical support to the State and also to the HCL employees who have been responding to citizen queries 24x7 from their homes,” said  Sanjay Gupta, Corporate Vice President and Program Director- New Vistas from HCL.