Nonprofit Age UK uses Azure AI Services to support human connection and battle loneliness

Every week, Ruth Lowe called her friend Roy. They talked about everyday things—the weather, YouTube—as well as harder topics, such as Roy’s late wife. Over the course of their friendship, Lowe encouraged Roy to reach out to other people, too. He joined a local group for older people and even joined a choir. Their connection deepened for six years until Roy passed away. “Over the years, I heard his world open up. All that started from us forming a friendship and reminding him that he was valued,” remembers Lowe. “The power of a phone call—the difference it can make to someone’s life—cannot be underestimated.”

Lowe is the Head of Loneliness Services at Age UK, a nonprofit that helps older people across the UK make the most of later life, whatever their circumstances. It serves more than seven million older people each year by providing advice and support, and researching and campaigning on the issues that matter most to older people. Age UK also runs the Telephone Friendship Service, which supports around 4,500 older people by matching them with volunteers for weekly calls, which is how Lowe and Roy connected.

As people age, they can become socially isolated, “and they can become trapped in a chronic cycle of loneliness” which can impact on their wellbeing and mental health, Lowe explains. “When somebody is there for them, contacts them, and listens to them, that two-way friendship can be the first step in pulling them out of loneliness.”

To protect the older people and volunteers who use the Telephone Friendship Service, Age UK records and monitors calls. Its old process was time-consuming, though, so the nonprofit incorporated AI into its monitoring operations. It now uses Azure AI Service’s speech-to-text capabilities to transcribe calls, which it evaluates for any concerns.

"Many older people are still digitally excluded, relying on the telephone or face-to-face services,” explains Alasdair Stewart, Director of National Services at Age UK. "We've managed to improve the efficiency and safety of the Telephone Friendship Service by introducing this AI-powered transcription tool, allowing our staff team to achieve and deliver more without any extra resource.”

Protecting vulnerable clients and volunteers

“Older people trust Age UK, so it’s important to make sure our services are safe,” Lowe says. “We take every step to protect older people and volunteers.” In addition to pre-match screening, training, and other safeguards, the nonprofit records all calls and reviews the initial call between matches as well as a sample of subsequent conversations. Staff are on hand to support and navigate any issues that arise throughout a Telephone Friendship Service match.

Previously, an Age UK employee listened to the calls, which last an average of 30 minutes, although some can last up to three hours. The idea to employ AI to improve the operations arose from a hackathon, and Age UK worked with the nonprofit-focused digital agency Reason Digital to automate the resource-intensive process. “Between them and our work with Microsoft Tech for Social Impact, this project shows how a collaborative approach leads to what’s best for charities,” says Vince Gratrick, Director of Digital and Technology at Age UK.

How it works: Each Telephone Friendship Service call is recorded on the cloud communications platform Twilio, and a bespoke API sends the MP3 to Azure AI Services. An app built on Azure, which uses off-the-shelf speech-to-text services, transcribes the audio in mere minutes. The transcription is sent to a custom database Age UK maintains, where it is scanned for words related to potentially concerning topics, such as finances or mental health. The call is scored, and Age UK employees review calls that surpass a safety threshold.

“Accuracy was our key criteria in developing this tool,” explains Daniel Summers, Senior Applications and Development Manager of Age UK. “The Azure transcription service was by far the best and most cost-effective of all the providers we tried.” Azure enables Age UK to pay only for what they use, so the nonprofit can scale up or down as needed.

“The tool consistently picks up and flags anything we would be concerned about, so we’re really confident in it,” Lowe says. “We know what is happening on calls, and that helps ensure the service is safe for the older people using it and our volunteers.” Plus, the Azure transcription service has provided 100 percent uptime throughout the nearly three years Age UK has used it.

When a call does trigger a review, the transcription app timestamps the sensitive words so employees can quickly locate the part of the conversation in question. “Before, we spent a lot of time listening to calls where there were no issues, whereas now we are able to review a higher percentage of calls and focus our resources in the right place” by more closely monitoring higher risk calls, Lowe says. “Then we can deal with any potential safeguarding issues much more quickly.”

Fighting loneliness on a larger scale

Nearly a million older people across the UK say they often feel lonely, "so we’ve been keen to grow this service,” Lowe says. “We’ve been able to do that over the last few years in part due to the transcription tool.”

So far, the AI-powered transcription app has assessed 23,000 Telephone Friendship Service calls and saved staff 9,500 hours. With the time saved, employees can focus on serving existing matches and bringing in more older people who need a friend.

Loneliness isn’t going away anytime soon, and as the UK population ages, demand for services for older people will only increase. "Given our limited income as a charity, it's difficult for our services to expand and keep pace, so we're always looking at how we can become more efficient and effective,” Stewart says. "The AI-powered transcription solution is one way we're doing this, ensuring we can maximize our reach and help as many older people as possible.”

Age UK is eager to explore how it can apply the efficiencies and safety-focused outcomes of AI to other services it offers. For example, the nonprofit hopes to use a transcription app to monitor its Silver Line, a 24/7 helpline that triages a quarter-million calls every year on everything from mental health crises to middle-of-the-night chats. It also envisions using AI to identify older people’s biggest concerns to further empower its advocacy work.

“At Age UK, we have ambitions to grow and do even more going forward,” Gratrick says. “There’s a huge potential for us to amplify the human element of our work through the muscle that Microsoft is developing with its AI services.”

Find out more about Age UK on X (Twitter), Facebook, and LinkedIn.