Gambling Helpline

The Gambling Helpline has introduced a text service, to overcome the barrier of shame and stigma which can prevent or delay contact with the Helpline and face-to-face services.The service has been promoted using billboard advertisements in Auckland, Christchurch and Wellington.

Mobile phones can provide more discretion than a fixed land-line in a family or work environment and New Zealanders can access the service anonymously and at no charge, by texting to the number 8006, which was organised for us by Dialhog.

The free text generates a response communicating the Helpline's 0800 number - 0800 654 655 and also reassurance that a counsellor will soon be in touch. Clients are encouraged to phone whenever is convenient for them and if they don't feel like talking, they can send through their contact details for an information pack to be sent to them, including Gambling Helpline's self-help booklets and a list of all face-to-face counselling agencies.

If the new clients choose to continue to text information about their concerns, appropriate motivational text messages are sent and ongoing text encouragement is provided to phone the Helpline.  This is done using Dialhog's Instant Message function, designed to send a text to a single recipient immediately.

Over time, the Helpline believes it will be possible to determine the groups most likely to text and those for whom the different services are most useful.

"This initiative builds on the Gambling Helpline's commitment to ongoing development of technological solutions which increase the range of communication and choices available to clients who need help."

Pauline Proud
Gambling Helpline
www.gamblingproblem.co.nz

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Health TV

Health TV is a free channel for medical waiting rooms, which aims to engage, educate and entertain patients before they see a medical professional.

Their programme schedule screens short, health-related documentaries and magazine-style entertainment clips, together with easy-listening music videos.  Like every TV channel there are also adverts, generally about health related products.

Dialhog provides a service where patients could text a product 'keyword', plus their name and address to a 'short code' - the number 4040 - and by doing this, request a sample of the product they were interested in.  An acknowledgement text is automatically sent back to the texter and then their request routed to a different email address, depending on which keyword was used.

"The use of text messaging as a direct response mechanism has been very useful for Health TV advertisers.

Some clients have opted to include an offer for a free product sample in their ad, so it was important that we received concise respondent reports that could quickly be passed to our mail fulfillment house.

 Mat Hamlin
General Manager
Health TV
www.htv.co.nz 

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