BPO
Bilingual patient support in Welsh and English to WCAG 2.2 AA
A Welsh healthcare organisation needed patient support that treated Welsh and English equally. An outsourced bilingual team cut wait times and met WCAG 2.2 AA.
Results at a glance
- -64%
- Welsh-language wait time
- -38%
- Average speed of answer
- +21 pts
- First-contact resolution
- -72%
- Accessibility complaints
vs English queue
104 to 64 seconds
The challenge
The organisation ran a patient contact centre that handled appointment booking, test results and general enquiries across phone, email and web forms. Demand had grown faster than the team, and Welsh-language callers often waited longer or were routed to an English-only queue.
The Welsh Language Standards require Welsh and English to be treated equally, and the organisation also had to meet WCAG 2.2 AA on its digital channels. Falling short carried both a compliance risk and a real cost to patients who could not reach the right service in the language they chose.
Pain points
- Welsh-speaking callers were routed to a second queue and waited longer than English-speaking callers
- Web forms and result letters did not meet WCAG 2.2 AA, so assistive technology users struggled to complete them
- Appointment enquiries peaked in the morning and overwhelmed a fixed shift pattern
- Patient data was handled without a written processing agreement covering the outsourced staff
Our approach
- Recruited and trained a bilingual team so every contact channel could be answered in Welsh or English by the same first responder
- Rebuilt the web enquiry forms and result templates to WCAG 2.2 AA and tested them with screen readers and keyboard-only navigation
- Introduced a single queue with skills-based routing so language choice no longer changed the wait time
- Data handled under UK GDPR with a Data Processing Agreement and role-based access to the patient record system
Results at a glance
The results
- Welsh and English callers reached an agent in comparable time, and the second-queue delay was removed.
- The digital channels passed a WCAG 2.2 AA audit and complaints about form accessibility fell sharply.
- Average speed of answer dropped across both languages while first-contact resolution rose.
Patients now get the same service whether they ring in Welsh or English, and our forms finally work for people using assistive technology.
Common questions
Every channel is answered by a bilingual first responder and a single queue routes on skill, not language, so language choice does not change the wait.
These are representative engagements. Client identities are anonymised and the metrics are illustrative of the type of results this work delivers, not audited figures for a named client.
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