Caritas Vienna is a nonprofit organization tied to the Archdiocese of Vienna dedicated to helping people in the province of Vienna and Lower Austria. It is part of International Caritas, which works worldwide. Caritas Vienna has 6,000 employees.
Matthias Schindler is the application manager for Caritas Vienna.
Challenge
Finding the right communications platform to connect their 6,000+ employees
Caritas Vienna is a large nonprofit with over 6,000 employees working on a variety of projects across Vienna and eastern Lower Austria. The types of projects they manage include working with people with disabilities, families, asylum seekers, and people experiencing homelessness. On any given day, they can have thousands of employees out working with vulnerable populations.
Caritas Vienna didn’t have a central platform for all of these employees to communicate, according to Matthias Schindler, the company’s application manager.
Although not officially allowed, a lot of employees were using their personal accounts on unofficial channels, like WhatsApp or Telegram, to communicate with each other during the day.
This was creating issues: using several different chat platforms caused delays and raised security concerns. Not having a company-wide chat platform made it harder for their employees to communicate and collaborate in groups.
Caritas Vienna’s employees also didn’t want to continue using their personal accounts for business purposes.
The company realized it was past time to provide Caritas Vienna employees with a centralized communications platform that allowed them to communicate with their colleagues across the organization, both one-on-one and in groups.
Caritas Vienna needed a solution that was simple, user-friendly, and customizable: most of their employees spent their days helping people in the field, not staring at a computer screen, and weren’t very tech-savvy.
“It was really important for us to find a tool that’s really simple and that all of our employees could use. Most of them don’t work in front of a computer on a day-to-day basis. They work with homeless people, people that need special care, etc. We needed a customizable solution so that people weren’t confronted with functions and buttons that they didn’t understand and they didn’t need.”
Solution
A highly-customizable communications platform with fast, reliable customer service
At first, the IT department considered working with Microsoft Teams, but the platform didn’t offer the full range of features that they needed at a price that was competitive for a larger nonprofit like Caritas Vienna.
When Matthias and his team found Rocket.Chat, they immediately saw that the solution checked all of Caritas Vienna’s boxes.
The features Caritas Vienna needed included a reliable and fast iOS and Android app and push notifications, as well as group and one-on-one chat options.
Matthias and his team also connected Caritas Vienna’s Zoom account with Rocket.Chat, so that employees could conduct video calls within the platform.
Rocket.Chat is highly customizable, so the IT team could choose the features they wanted to include and disable everything else. Employees wouldn’t need to worry about which buttons to press or which features to use – it was all taken care of for them in the backend.
Plus, if Matthias and the IT department ever run into an issue, they know they can get quick and in-depth responses from Rocket.Chat’s expert support team.
Matthias says this level of support really sets Rocket.Chat apart from other solutions they were considering.
Another advantage of using Rocket.Chat is the platform’s fast release cycle: if Matthias thinks of a feature he needs that the platform doesn’t offer, he lets Rocket.Chat know. They evaluate the request and implement the changes very quickly.
And if Rocket.Chat decides not to add the feature, the IT team can still use the open-source API to easily make the change themselves.
“Rocket.Chat is a good chat solution with a lot of features. It’s a great tool for nonprofit organizations.”
Solution
Faster, easier, streamlined communication for 6,000+ employees
Today, Caritas Vienna has a fully-functional chat solution that serves all 6,000 of its employees.
They no longer have to worry about delays from decentralized communication, and they’ve eliminated the security risks stemming from employees using external chat solutions.
Responses are faster and communication is easier. Employees are happy with the company-wide chat solution. It has improved efficiency and streamlined collaboration, both one-on-one and in groups.
In the future, Caritas Vienna has plans to add its volunteers to the platform as well. Rocket.Chat’s flexibility and customizability make that possible.
Rocket.Chat’s flexible features, responsive customer service, and competitive pricing make it a great solution for nonprofit organizations like Caritas Vienna, Matthias concludes.
“Collaboration has improved. People read the chat more frequently than they check emails, so we can reach people faster than before. That’s true for all departments, and it’s especially true for IT.”
