Healthcare Industry Case Study

Introduction

A health information technology services company needed to expand its support of the Hispanic community. This company provides technological, operational, and consulting solutions and services to patients, providers, and pharmaceutical companies as well as state and federal governments. This company was faced with the task of reducing expenses for their clients while also needing to increase its support of the Hispanic community across the various markets it serves.

The Challenge

The Health Information Firm was utilizing an in-house contact center as well as two contact centers in the Philippines. The challenge they faced was two-fold: the in-house contact center was expensive and counterproductive to their need to trim costs for their clients. The contact centers in the Philippines were less expensive than the in-house agents, but the time zone and strong accent of the Philippine agents proved to be difficult and inefficient. The Health Information Firm wanted to find a partner that could fully support the growing Hispanic population they were serving and continue to save operational costs.

Solution

The Health Information Firm chose Centris to provide the bilingual customer service support they were needing. They chose Centris because, in addition to providing excellent bilingual support, Centris agents complete a rigorous certification program in order to become HIPAA compliant. As a result, Centris provides customer support for many healthcare organizations and is trained in numerous different patient management systems, transitioning quickly and seamlessly between platforms. Centris agents also understand the importance of privacy and security within the healthcare industry. Additionally, with the nearshore contact center model, they would see a substantial reduction in their operating costs thanks to the close proximity of Mexico to the United States.

Added Benefits

Within a few months of the relationship, the Health Information Firm realized that Centris brings many additional benefits to their company they didn’t initially consider. With Centris’ contact centers located in Mexico, the additional benefits include:

• Proximity & Operational Control: With Mexico being so close to the U.S. and sharing time zones, the Health Information Firm could easily communicate during regular business hours, and visiting the contact centers was a quick trip.

• Cultural Similarities: With close proximity to the U.S., Centris’ agents understand U.S. culture and were easily able to assist the firm’s customers appropriately.

• Strong Infrastructure: Due to Mexico’s dedication to providing a strong communications network to provide better coverage and competitive pricing, they experienced little to no communication or network issues.

• Accent-Neutral: With most of Centris’ agents formerly living in the U.S. and speaking both English and Spanish fluently, the agents provided accent-neutral support to their English-speaking customers as well as speaking fluently to Spanish-speaking customers.

Changing Approach

The Health Information Firm hired Centris for bilingual support seven years ago. Initially, the company wanted to improve its service level to above 80% of calls being handled in the first 30 seconds. They also wanted to reduce abandonment to less than 5% and increase CSAT and QA to over 90%. These goals were consistently met with Centris. However, due to the nature of healthcare and the need to show care and empathy to customers, Centris proposed a new QA system that would focus less on the processes and more on the patient/provider experience. The primary focus is now to provide a superior experience for the customer, rather than focus on the number of calls answered or abandoned.

Over the course of time, the Health Information Firm gradually moved all customer support operations over to Centris because of the efficiencies Centris offered in addition to the high quality of service Centris provides its customers. The bilingual agents provided language support for the Hispanic community as well as accent-neutral support for all other patients and providers served by the company.

The Result

Since changing the focus from process to improving customer experience, the CSAT rating has stayed above 90%. The bar was set high at a 93% CSAT rating and Centris has exceeded that every month. Centris agents are passionate about helping people with their healthcare issues. Centris agents are empathetic and caring and the CSAT scores paint that picture.