The chapter will be 1 of 4 call centers processing calls for the Red Cross' Service to the Armed Forces.
Sherri L. Brown, Senior Vice President for the American Red Cross Service to Armed Forces Program, looks on as Robert Rawstron, of Springfield, takes a call as she toured the Pioneer Valley Chapter's call center during her visit on Tuesday. SPRINGFIELD – The American Red Cross Pioneer Valley Chapter is gearing up to take its place as one of only four call centers in the nation where the Red Cross will take and process calls for Service to the Armed Forces.
The call center room at the chapter’s Cottage Street headquarters is stacked floor-to-ceiling with new computers and phones. The operators who normally work the call center are squeezed into a room next door, still handling calls from military families as the nationwide system takes shape.
“It’s a little like changing the chain on a bicycle while you are riding it,” said Richard E. Lee, executive director of the Pioneer Valley Chapter. “But starting June 13 the switchover will happen. The new system goes live.”
Beginning June 13, all military members and their families can use one number – (877) 272-7337 – to send an urgent message to a service member. Nationally, the service helps more than 2 million service members and many of the nation’s 24 million veterans.
Sherri L. Brown, senior vice president for the American Red Cross Service to Armed Forces, stopped by Cottage Street on Tuesday to check in on training and give the staff a pep talk. The Pioneer Valley Chapter has gone from 22 employees handling calls from military families to 28 on its way to a full staff of 35.
“I know it is not easy,” Brown told a training class Tuesday. “These are difficult cases.”
Brown said calls might involve financial need or other issues the Red Cross can address on its own.
But many calls cases involve the grave illness or imminent death of a loved one, Brown said. In those cases, Red Cross employees must first call the hospital and verify the grave illness, then they contact military commanders and try to get service members to come home.
“Military commanders trust us,” Brown said. “They rely on our objectivity. That’s why the military doesn’t do this work on its own. We are an objective third party.”
Lee said people who work in the call center make $25,000 to $35,000 a year.
“We serve to fill a need,” call center staffer Bernice M. Stadtlander, of Ludlow, said. “It’s so satisfying just to be able to help.”
She also gets to notify military fathers of the birth of children.
“I look forward to that,” she said.
The Pioneer Valley Chapter already handles about 33,000 cases a year from military families around the clock and seven days a week. Those calls are generated here and at about 90 American Red Cross Chapters that send their Service to Armed Forces work to Pioneer Valley on a contract basis. Red Cross organizations started contracting with the Pioneer Valley Chapter 20 years ago as the military mobilized for the first Persian Gulf War.
In October, the American Red Cross announced that it was streamlining its Service to Armed Forces and closing its call center in Virginia and a number of other centers around the country. Instead, starting June 13, all calls from military families across the country will to either Springfield, Fort Sill, Okla., San Diego or Louisville, Ky., no matter what time they come in or from where.
All four locations will have the same computer system and the same training, Lee said. That way cases will be handled the same way no matter where they are handled.
Service to Armed Forces is separate from Red Cross disaster services, but calls from military families spike during natural disasters, Brown said.
“There are military families in Joplin, Mo.,” she said, referring to the devastating tornado that struck there on Sunday.