Helping a Top Pharma Company Offer Better Care, Balance Compliance, and Lower Costs
Industry: Healthcare
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Key Takeaways
VirtualFlex platform offers geo-diverse and skilled empathetic agents, many with professional experience in the healthcare industry.
Liveops agents consistently deliver high-quality service, leading to improved patient satisfaction scores at or above 96%.
While ramping up utilization, client optimized costs by paying for active time that agents spend on the phone with patients.
A global pharmaceutical client had a reputation for unparalleled patient care. But maintaining that reputation with clinically-certified patient service agents put their budget, along with their CX resources, in a bind.
Offering optimal care to their patients meant having a high number of clinically-certified (RN) call center agents. This highly trained clinical talent met strict healthcare regulations, and offered exceptional care to those with specific medical questions. But these agents were also expensive, and they weren’t always used enough to warrant the cost. Many calls could easily be handled by agents that were not clinically certified, or at least could be vetted first and then connected to clinically-certified agents if necessary.
In short, the company was paying for clinically-certified agents to answer calls and help patients, even though they had a greater need for work that could be performed by less expensive, but still highly proficient, agents. It is critically important for these agents to make strong connections with patients, and to know when compliance and regulations mean they must connect a patient to one who is clinically certified.
The client’s clinically-certified agents were primarily geographically-concentrated. This meant the client faced another challenge—finding ways to ensure patients in all of their U.S. locations had best-in-class access to resources, support, and if need be, access to clinically-certified customer service. Balancing compliance and cost while keeping patient care at the forefront, the client made a decision that would change everything for them. It would also take their reputation of caring for patients to a whole new level.
How did they pull it off? By teaming up with Liveops.
Here's How Liveops was able to help.
96%
Average patient satisfaction
Improved
costs and utilization
100s
of agents available across US
Key Takeaways
VirtualFlex offers diverse and skilled agents, many with healthcare background
Liveops agents consistently deliver high-quality service, leading to improved patient satisfaction scores at or above 96%.
While ramping up utilization, client optimized costs by paying for active time that agents spend on the phone with patients.
Attracting Top Talent
In order to offer and maintain high standards of patient care, Liveops introduced the client to VirtualFlex, the platform that attracts experienced, entrepreneurial talent from across the country. These agents work from home, building their own business and reputation.
The agents available through VirtualFlex tend to have diverse backgrounds. Many have previous experience as caregivers, educators, and other service-oriented roles. For them providing services for a global healthcare and pharmaceutical company was a natural fit. Immediately the client’s patient service structure improved as the integration of the VirtualFlex platform gave them an additional boost of motivated, capable talent.
While agents through VirtualFlex were not clinically-certified RN’s, Liveops worked with the client to prepare them, and guide them through a rigorous certification process that would ensure compliance in a highly regulated industry. After building interactive, distance learning programs to onboard new agents, Liveops worked with the client to create custom programs that ensure agent compliance. Through a combination of continuous education and certification, Liveops and the client created systems that ensure active agents are knowledgeable of products, new skill requirements and regulatory changes.
The agents provided through Liveops took much of the call volume that clinically-certified agents did in the past. With their certification, motivation and passion for helping people, these agents worked seamlessly with the client, the client’s patients, and the clinically-certified agents who now only took specific, clinically-appropriate referrals.
Optimizing Costs
The VirtualFlex network of U.S.-based agents allowed the client to shift from in-house talent that was paid even when the phones weren’t ringing—to only paying for active time that agents spent on the phone with patients. This provided significant savings.
The Liveops model also ramped up utilization and sparked efficiency in all directions. The agents themselves aggressively expanded to add managing outbound call volume (while remaining available on inbound campaigns) to further build their home-based business. This resulted in benefits and savings that traditional, brick-and-mortar call centers can’t offer. For the client, consumption-based pricing ensured less idle time while maximizing utilization across the needs of the company.
Key Takeaways
VirtualFlex offers diverse and skilled agents, many with healthcare background
Liveops agents consistently deliver high-quality service, leading to improved patient satisfaction scores at or above 96%.
While ramping up utilization, client optimized costs by paying for active time that agents spend on the phone with patients.
Getting Results
The biggest result was also the most important one.
With Liveops and the VirtualFlex platform, the client maintained their ability to offer exceptional, empathetic care to their patients while saving costs. Agents who could delicately manage intimate conversations, and knew precisely when to match patients with clinically-trained RN care, consistently delivered high quality service that increased patient satisfaction scores.
In fact, the patient satisfaction scores (based on tens of thousands of survey responses) rose, remaining at a 96% or higher range, month-after-month.
Another key result was lowering CX costs while ramping up utilization. With agents around the country taking most calls that clinically-certified agents didn’t need to take, utilization rose all around, and nearly doubled for the client. The significant certification, and continuing education for new agents kept them sharp, current, and compliant with strict regulations.
Liveops continues to this day to provide the client with quality independent contractor agents. These agents enjoy serving this leading pharmaceutical company. They constantly remain certified and competitive, and love providing care to patients over the phone.
In Conclusion
Strict regulations, common to the pharmaceutical and healthcare industry, made patient service costly and cumbersome until the client partnered with Liveops.
The Liveops VirtualFlex platform connected agents with customizable compliance certification, and the consumption-based approach (that only pays for time the talent is working) provided enormous
savings for the client. This solution and its savings drove positive patient satisfaction scores and upheld the client’s reputation.
In the process, a mutually satisfying, long-term relationship began between the client and Liveops.
With the VirtualFlex platform, the high-achieving and driven talent pool helps companies build their brand, and the consumption-based model heightens utilization and allows Liveops to offer a win-win solution that healthcare companies increasingly need.
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