Advice by Phone
Citizens Advice Rushmoor has been delivering telephone advice for many years: we are committed to ensuring people can access our service through a range of channels, and we know we need to do more to meet demand. That’s why we joined up with other local Citizens Advice offices to deliver Adviceline in 2011, which gives us the best chance of being able to answer the phone to as many people as possible. In the last quarter we answered nearly 500 Adviceline calls, with many others being answered elsewhere in our group. This number is going up all the time.
Our Adviceline number is 03444 111 306 and is charged at a local rate only – for many people it is free depending on their phone contract. That’s why we were disappointed to see national press coverage recently about Citizens Advice charging more. That actually only happens in a very few cases – and definitely not in the local area. We know most of our clients are on lower incomes, and we are committed to ensuring no one is put off from using our service due to cost.
We continue to make sure we dedicate as much time as we can to answering call demand. This largely depends on our volunteer team, who we depend on for all our frontline work – they really are fantastic, and if you want to join us just go to our volunteering page! It’s rewarding work and every day we are helping more people.
Meanwhile, last week alone we responded to over 150 online requests for information on webchat and email – another great way of reaching more people. Do look at our online resources, which cover a huge range of issues – and we always want to know about any ideas for improving our service.