How a Cloud Contact Center Can Elevate Healthcare

Almost everyone has dealt with challenges that come along with healthcare providers. Patients often face a variety of issues that typically make the experience more challenging than anticipated. For example, patients may run into difficulties while finding an available healthcare professional, scheduling an appointment, or getting in and out of an appointment in a timely manner. Regardless, it’s rare that the entire experience goes exactly as expected.  

It’s no secret that the healthcare industry has faced challenges in recent years. “If healthcare providers don’t fully embrace the idea of customer-driven encounters, they can open themselves up to risk,” says Matthew Hitch, Senior Partner at Deloitte in a Perspective article focused on healthcare. The risk comes in the form of attracting and retaining patients. Without a growing patient pool, providers may find themselves in financial jeopardy. “Unless the provider-patient relationship changes, an organization may compromise its ability to manage risk,” Hitch adds.  

Throughout the healthcare industry, providers are reporting massive revenue losses. Kaiser reported a $1.3 billion loss in its second quarter, Cleveland Clinic reported $1 billion in losses over the first half of the year, and Sutter Health lost $457 million in its second quarter. These totals are significant and only cover only a small portion of the industry. To further highlight the downward trend, the global shortage of healthcare workers in the United States alone could reach 18 million by 2030 according to a whitehouse.gov report.  

Despite the daunting numbers, you can overcome many challenges by transitioning to a cloud contact center.  

Self-service options will play a key role in patient retention. You can use Five9 Intelligent Virtual Agent (IVA) to automate routine and repetitive tasks so your team can focus on higher-value work. Many patients expect self-service options when dealing with providers. Through IVA, patients can book appointments, make credit card payments, and access frequently asked questions — all at any time of day or night. This helps ease the stress of interacting with a healthcare provider.  

Five9 Digital Engagement solutions can enhance how you connect patients to care via omnichannel interactions. Today’s consumers expect an Amazon-like experience when they reach out to a healthcare provider: continuity between channels such as voice, email, SMS, webchat, video, and social messaging. Five9 connects and stores the entire context of each patient’s communication in the interaction — enabling you to provide consistent support. So, if a patient starts communicating on your website via chat, then moves the communication stream to a virtual or a human agent via text or email, it’s all time stamped and stored as one continuous interaction for a provider to see. 

Healthcare Providers Leveraging Cloud Contact Centers 

Five9 has aided numerous healthcare providers by helping them increase customer satisfaction and improve call quality, among other benefits.  

Teladoc 

Founded in 2002, Teladoc Health, Inc. is a global leader in virtual healthcare and believes that everyone should have access to the best healthcare anywhere in the world on their own terms. Teladoc has multiple service centers in multiple countries with contact center employees operating 24x7. About 50% of visits come in the form of inbound calls to the contact center, and they handle more than 2 million calls annually.  

After outsourcing its contact center operation for several years, Teladoc brought everything back in-house. Transitioning the contact center posed many challenges such as outages, inconsistency, instability, unreliability, and lack of support. Teladoc recognized it needed a modern cloud contact center solution that could grow and scale with the company.  

In 2016, Teladoc reached out to Five9 and asked if they could execute a quick implementation before Teladoc’s busy season started. Five9 swiftly made their need a reality. 

Upon implementation, Teladoc reported outstanding results including: 

• 97% customer satisfaction ratings 

• 99% uptime 

• 30% increase in call volume YoY with 20% less staff 

Once the pandemic began, Teladoc’s biggest challenge became staffing for service demand while moving all operations and the contact center to 100% remote. “Five9 enabled Teladoc agents to work remotely while maintaining the same level of productivity working from home. The transition was seamless, and agents were able to continue caring for our members without any type of service interruption,” says Teladoc Director of Workforce and Program Management Andrea Brown.  

Find out more about how Teladoc Health Leverages Agent Assist to Improve Efficiency and Call Quality. 

Public Partnerships 

Public Partnerships (PPL) supports individuals with disabilities or chronic illnesses and aging adults, eligible for public Medicaid assistance, to “self-direct” their own long-term home care. States and managed healthcare organizations face rising costs, administrative inefficiencies, and growing populations in need of long-term services and support. PPL helps them serve more of their eligible Medicaid residents and members who require long-term care, better ensuring the efficient use of taxpayer funds. 

PPL’s previous on-premises solution couldn’t handle increases in call volume, so it needed to find a solution that could quickly adapt to growth. Disparate systems made it difficult for the contact center to evolve with PPL’s fast-growing customer base. “We needed a contact center that could evolve with our business with the ability to adapt and unify systems as new needs arose,” says PPL Director of Customer Service Workforce Shane Moodyman. “We were looking for a contact center that could easily scale without compromising the integrity of our customer service in order to support our business as we grew and demonstrated reliable support.” 

According to PPL’s post-call surveys, customer satisfaction has increased as the organization has been able to answer calls quicker. Customer satisfaction has exceeded previous highs as the Five9 solution enabled PPL to better understand its customer service goals. 

Learn more about how Public Partnerships Works from Home with Five9. 

Alivi 

By providing solutions for healthcare organizations to access technology platforms and advisory services, Alivi allows health plans and providers to focus on creating a tailored care strategy for members while managing costs. Alivi has two inbound contact center locations taking calls from Medicare and Medicaid patients who need to schedule transportation to and from appointments. The contact center’s previous on-premises contact center solution provided limited visibility into agent activity, had usability issues, and did not provide detailed reporting. 

After choosing Five9 for its new cloud contact center, Alivi needed to go live in two weeks. They wanted to fully transition to the cloud before the start of several new contracts that began at the first of the year.  

Alivi implemented an AI-powered IVA from Five9 which they branded “Ava.” In just a few weeks, Alivi enabled more than 3,700 return-ride activations. Service interactions such as these can become automated with IVA because it's a simple task that requires little human expertise. 

In the pilot program, Ava greets callers, searches for the members’ phone numbers in the database, and requests they authenticate themselves. If that exchange works correctly, Ava will activate the return ride. Ava will tell the member the license plate of the driver, type of car, and ETA, and will follow up with an SMS text. The virtual agent works throughout multiple channels to improve the customer service experience. Feedback from members and health plan partners has been extremely positive. 

Read about Alivi’s success in Virtual Agents Activate Thousands of Non-Emergency Rides. 

Next Steps 

The healthcare industry deals with a range of challenges that influence everyday people who need care. To solve these issues and improve the patient experience, providers should look to the cloud. Cloud contact centers provide solutions that can increase patient loyalty, help reduce the workforce shortage, and calm financial uncertainties.  

To learn more, download the Five9 Intelligent Virtual Agent for Healthcare brief or visit our healthcare solutions page.