Flora Collins from Jordanhill in Glasgow is a handy person to know.
Not only does she have a legal degree but, thanks to training as a member of the cabin crew for a major airline, she knows what to do when someone has a heart attack and can, at a puuuuush, even deliver a baby.
Not that she’d rush to do either.
“I’d always put out a call first to find out if there were any medical staff on board!” she confesses.
Mid-air medical emergencies are not uncommon but sometimes passengers can get lucky – like the chap on a recent flight to Florida who found himself in the care of 14 cardiac specialists en route to a conference.
But what if there’s no doctor on board and a passengers develops a condition beyond the crew’s abilities to handle?
Well, it’s at this point the captain will contact a very special call centre: a sort of NHS 24 especially for airlines, staffed by A&E specialists who can diagnose at a distance and talk the crew through any steps needed to help a passenger.
These on-call doctors also have the power to divert a flight, something that can cost an airline hundreds of thousands of pounds, but which may be needed to save a life.
This same service is also used by super yachts if passengers fall ill at sea.
Its effectiveness depends highly upon its staff, who not only have medical knowledge, but the ability to ask the right questions and give those onboard the confidence to follow their instructions – even at 30,000 feet during turbulence or mid-ocean among stormy waters
On s1jobs right now you can find call and contact centre vacancies for NHS 24 and other emergency organisations where you could find yourself in a similar role.
It’s unlikely you’ll ask a Boeing 767 to land on the beach at Barra but you will be making a big difference to people in their own homes.
If you’re a nurse practitioner, you’ll give advice directly to callers, assessing their query and directing them to the most appropriate treatment.
A large call service like NHS 24 also needs IT specialists, communications managers and HR staff to keep it running smoothly. After all, call and contact centres depend on behind-the-scenes teams every bit as much as the people who answer the phones.
For all the latest Call & Contact Centre vacancies visit s1jobs