How Age UK Cut Wait Times in Half to Support Older People Faster

At a Glance

Challenge

• Handling thousands of incoming emails per week, causing missed and duplicated responses
• Spending hours sorting, flagging, and manually replying to the same questions
• Lacking clear ownership of emails, leaving older people waiting up to 8 weeks

Solution

• Clear ownership with emails assigned to individuals
• Shared templates and easy personalization to shorten response times
• Analytics and insights into email volume to better manage staffing

Results

• 50% of incoming emails handled by templates
• Waiting times reduced from 8 to 4 weeks
• 100% of SLAs met

“If I can respond to them an hour quicker, that's brilliant. It can be the difference between an older person having or not having a friendship.” Adam Winkworth, National Manager of Friendship Services at Age UK

About Age UK

Team size 1300+ employees, 9700+ volunteers

Industry Non-profit – aging care

Age UK is a leading UK charity dedicated to improving later life for older people nationwide. It provides information, advice, practical support via local services, and campaigns on key later-life issues. Its free Telephone Friendship Service offers regular one-to-one calls that match volunteers with seniors, providing companionship and helping tackle loneliness.

The Challenge: Staying Afloat With Thousands of Incoming Emails

The UK is facing a loneliness epidemic, with nearly a million seniors often feeling isolated. Thousands reach out to Age UK's Telephone Friendship Service looking for friendship and companionship, and the service’s 40-person team works tirelessly to provide this critical support.

With such high email volume, the Telephone Friendship Service was struggling to keep up. The entire team was working on similar messages in the same shared mailboxes, creating confusion, delays, and mounting pressure.

“Older people were waiting longer for support. Volunteers didn’t always receive timely reassurance or guidance. The staff spent hours each day just sorting and flagging emails instead of supporting people directly,” Adam says.

The Solution: From Email Chaos to Clarity With Emailgistics

Age UK chose Emailgistics because it sits natively inside Outlook, avoiding a complex new system for a large, remote team. Working with the Emailgistics team, Adam and his managers tested the tool, built simple guides and a short demo, and rolled it out to their team of 40 staff members in about two weeks.

Clear Ownership With Emails Assigned to Individuals

With Emailgistics, each email is explicitly assigned to a person, pulling it out of the noisy shared mailbox into an individual queue. Staff see a focused list of what they own, which makes it easier to prioritize urgent or sensitive cases and work through emails one by one.

As Adam explains:

“With Emailgistics, it brings it out of that big inbox into just your inbox. Having your own independent inbox that you can just work through and have a list that you can see, ‘I finished that email, now on to the next one.’”

Shared Templates: A “Game Changer” in Quicker Response Times

A lot of the emails Age UK’s Telephone Friendship Service gets are routine questions from older people or volunteers, such as:

• “How do I send mail to the friend I've been paired with?”
• “How do I reschedule our call?”

The team now uses shared templates for common scenarios like applications, cancellations, and volunteer questions, instead of manually rewriting the same responses. This frees up time to answer the questions that require personal, in-depth, human support.

Managers can easily change or update templates, and the team just clicks a button to get the most up-to-date responses — no need to make a big announcement, ensuring everyone is using the latest version.

“Being able to write a response using templates at the click of a button, but also being able to adjust it for personalization, it is such a time saver … and has been an absolute game changer for us,” Adam says.

Analytics and Insights Into Email Volume to Manage Staffing

Reporting in Emailgistics shows when different types of email arrive and how volume builds throughout the day. Managers can align staffing with peak demand and protect time for higher-value work, like making more friendship calls.

In Adam’s words:

“We have a wider angle view of the volume of emails and when they come in and at what times. We're able to better rotate our staff to work in those different time periods, which then frees up more time as well.”

“I'd say well over 50% of the emails that we receive can now be answered through the help of a shared template.” Adam Winkworth, National Manager of Friendship Services at Age UK

Results: Less Inbox Stress, Faster Replies, More Friendships

With more structure to the service’s shared mailbox, the team has seen the biggest growth in total friendship matches in two years, fueled by faster, more consistent responses to every inquiry that arrives.

Today, staff use shared templates for over 50% of incoming emails, giving them a head start on replies without losing the human touch. They hit their response-time SLA (5 days or quicker) 100% of the time — and they’re considering reducing the SLA further because Emailgistics has made it so reliable.

“Emailgistics has turned what used to be overwhelming into something almost gamified — you can see the numbers going down and feel like you’re winning for the people we support,” Adam says.

But even more importantly, wait times for older people finding their match have been cut in half, from eight weeks down to four. For a senior waiting for companionship, those weeks matter.

As Adam puts it:

“It’s not like selling insurance or buying a new car. We’re talking about real older people who need our support. If I can respond to them an hour quicker, that’s brilliant. It can be the difference between someone having or not having a friendship.”

Behind the metrics is reclaimed time and emotional energy:

“It's not just a nicer inbox; it’s given us back hours to put into conversations that genuinely change someone’s day, week, month, or even year.”

Results at a Glance

• 50% of incoming emails are handled by templates
• 2× faster friendship match
• 100% SLA compliance

“Emailgistics help free up the time for our staff to create that magic, create that friendship, to create that lifeline that older people need.” Adam Winkworth, National Manager of Friendship Services at Age UK

Ready to shave email response times by an hour or more every day?

Book a demo. Then try Emailgistics free for 14 days.