British grocery retailer Sainsbury’s is introducing SignVideo to its customer service centres – revolutionising the way deaf British Sign Language (BSL) users can contact them.
The year-long trial kicked off this month, enabling deaf customers using BSL to contact Sainsbury’s call centres via a secure video interpreting service. Sainsbury’s said it is committed to ensuring the customer experience is as easy as possible.
The service allows customers to place a call to Sainsbury’s careline and grocery online contact centres via a free link on the Help Centre.
It connects deaf customers to a BSL interpreter who phones the call centre and relays the conversation in real-time. The free service is available from Monday-Friday 8am-6pm.
Sainsbury’s already offers Text Relay, which is used by many deaf and hard-of-hearing people. Now deaf customers have instant British Sign Language access when calling the supermarket
Speaking on the new technology, Tim Fallowfield, company secretary, corporate services director and board champion for disability and carers at Sainsbury’s said: "We pride ourselves on our customer service, and part of this is making sure it’s as easy as possible for all our customers to communicate with us about their shop."
He continued: "We already have induction loops in all our stores for hearing aid users, and we’re pleased to be trialling this innovative solution to make it even easier for our deaf BSL customers to get in touch with us when they need to."
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