The smart money always stays long on the value of interpersonal communications. Client stay long on partners who understand that.
Arguably no division of business within a company holds more client responsibility than the call center. It becomes the epicenter of client interactions and the front lines of a brand’s presence in the market. According to Statista, healthcare is the U.S. industry with the third-highest customer service dissatisfaction (18%); and, not surprisingly, 34% of call center functions are offshored overseas.
The potential for this customer service problem is especially high for Third Party Administrators (TPA). They handle plans and claims between employer/plan/patients and the medical providers. They balance an intricate web of stakeholders: employers, professional employer groups, associations, brokers, and healthcare providers.
Communication is vital as TPAs are caught up in a tornado of live and real-time communication needs. Members and healthcare providers always require claim updates, and the call center is the front line of that business interaction. That’s a challenging element to outsource. Especially offshore. This paper examines Vee Healthtek' successful onboarding of provider inbound call services for a leading Third Party Administrator in the Midwest.
A Vee Healthtek client was managing explosive growth in 2017. But with growth comes the responsibility of servicing an expanding client base. More calls coming in, so more staffing is needed to manage it.
Providers were calling for critical updates, but staff was too thin to handle the call volumes and deliver satisfaction. The client needed all staff to stay on the phones; so even if they were able to bring on new employees during this time, they had little training support. They needed someone who already knew their business. They turned to Vee Healthtek.
In ninety days, Vee Healthtek built a world-class team, operating on a world-class infrastructure, delivering world-class Service Level Agreements.
In nearly two years, Vee Healthtek has fielded about 2,400,000 calls for the client, with near-perfect uptime.
About 97% of calls have gone through, and the team of 17 resources and 3 supervisors/quality auditors have consistently held industry-leading average wait times and hold times.
How do we define a vision for a perfect call center environment?
There are four pillars:
The team set out to exhaustively document procedures, processes, guidelines, and system workflows. Multiple site-visits from the global delivery team ensured relationship-building.
Our Operations Manager, who oversaw the design, implementation, and execution of this project says “The biggest factor in terms of talent was the accent neutralization/culture training modules. They curate our talent and get us going quickly, with high quality.”
The healthcare industry can see 30-35% annual turnover across call services. Building iterative knowledge has proven to be the key across so many healthcare practices, but no more so than with call-related talent.
Vee Healthtek has had ZERO turnover on this project in two years, preserving talent, knowledge capital, and ultimately, a culture of client intimacy. Success, unmeasured, is just optimism bridled with intuition. Vee Healthtek took steps to ensure detailed reporting dashboards and trend analysis that gave clients insights into best practices.
Finally, establishing best practices with account management, regular calls, data tracking, and governance meetings, created a dynamic platform by which Vee Healthtek and the client could work together.
By holding to the four pillars of a call center environment, 1) preparation, 2) talent, 3) measurement, and 4) governance, Vee Healthtek was able to align a call center partnership with the client that yields extraordinary outcomes.
Spanning millions of conversations over the last two years, Vee Healthtek has proudly held the front lines of healthcare provider interactions and created incredible value for the client.
Accurate, Competent, and Collaborative.
Every compliment. Every complaint. Every conversation.
Every call.
