This ophthalmology/optometry practice’s 32 contact center agents support 13 clinics and 55 ophthalmologists. Most of those agents work remotely. Unlike typical 24/7 call centers, this team operates Monday through Friday, 8 AM to 5 PM, focusing mainly on scheduling appointments across the organization’s clinics.
Challenge
The practice asks a lot of its agents - consistency, agility and quality – in a healthcare setting that demands professionalism, empathy and accuracy during patient interactions. Each clinic—and often each physician—has unique scheduling protocols. Agents are expected to successfully navigate those protocols across multiple communication channels -- phone calls, emails and through a patient portal.
Managing and equipping a remote agent workforce working in such a demanding environment, while attracting and retaining qualified agents, are top-of-mind challenges for the organization’s contact center leadership team. Key to their contact center’s success is the ability to evaluate each agent’s performance, both administratively – the agent’s ability to successfully follow internal processes and procedures - and from a patient experience perspective.
Evaluating agent performance was a time-consuming, manual, Excel-driven process. Those evaluations yielded pass/fail grades that didn’t provide all the context managers wanted as they sought to strengthen agent training, improve their agent incentive program and spot performance trends. Bottom line: managers wanted more insight into calls and a more sophisticated method for call scoring.
"Before Eleveo, our scoring was manual. As we listened to calls we had an Excel sheet pulled up and we just checked boxes. There was no scoring system; it was pass/fail. Eleveo helped us gain more insight into actionable information to help our contact center run more efficiently and enhance customer experience."
Solution
Eleveo’s Call Recording and Quality Management tools have transformed the way the practice evaluates agent performance.
With Eleveo Call Recording, the team can review and distribute past interactions for quality assurance, training, and dispute resolution purposes. These recordings are essential for gauging agent performance, informing training sessions and providing timely feedback to agents. They also provide a reliable, objective record of every conversation for compliance purposes.
Eleveo Quality Management enables managers to score calls more comprehensively. As opposed to the previously manual scoring process, managers use Eleveo to automatically score calls using a detailed, weighted system that breaks down calls into four key sections:
- Call opening: (e.g. Did the agent introduce themselves? Was the company name mentioned? Did the agent show a willingness to help?)
- ‘Meat’ of the Call: (e.g. Did the agent pull up the correct patient and chart? Did the agent ask probing questions and actively listen? Were appointments scheduled properly, and all appropriate details collected?)
- Holds and Transfers (e.g. Did agent place the patient on hold properly and check in with them every couple of minutes?)
- Call closing: (e.g. Did the agent recap the call at the end and provide the patient with all necessary clinical guidelines and protocols? If the patient is a minor- was the agent clear the minor would have to be accompanied by an adult?
Results
-
Smarter Evaluations: The practice transitioned from a pass/fail method of evaluating calls to a data-driven scoring system. This generates deeper insights into agent performance and training needs—all without increasing the time spent on evaluations.
-
More Informed Training & Coaching: By saving and sharing the characteristics common to “perfect calls,” managers and trainers show agents real-world examples of calls they can model.
-
Agent Accountability and Self-Supervision: With most of the staff working from home, Eleveo’s tools empower agents to take ownership of their performance, and visibility into scores and expectations has created a culture that encourages agent accountability instead of micromanagement – critical to attracting the type of agents the practice wants.
-
Motivated Agents: The organization ties Eleveo-enabled quality scores directly into employee incentive programs, motivating agents by expanding and refining the criteria for rewards.
-
Easier Issue Resolution: Recorded calls are invaluable for resolving questions that may arise internally about scheduling or whether proper protocol was followed. Contact center managers can quickly reference the call to verify details. Eleveo Call Recording makes it extremely easy to find and export calls via email.
"With Eleveo’s automated scoring, we’re getting much more detailed and qualitative call analyses and we are doing it in the same amount of time it took to score manually. It’s a very big improvement, honestly; it empowers our managers and helps agents self-supervise."
Conclusion
Eleveo has deepened the insights contact center managers are gaining from agent/patient interactions. The automation built into Eleveo’s quality management tool is a significant upgrade from spreadsheets and manual scoring, providing much more and much-needed context for agent evaluations and training. Contact center leadership is better able to hold remote agents accountable and equip them to self-supervise.