By Amy Brown, CEO, Authenticx
LinkedIn: Amy Brown
X: @be_authenticx
Much of the world has evolved to support people who like to figure things out for themselves. We’ve got YouTube tutorials on thousands of topics and the internet for everything else. Plenty of B2B companies offer their clients DIY options through customer portals and more. But in the complex healthcare world, DIY often won’t suffice.
When people attempt to navigate this industry, they can encounter issues as soon as they call for assistance. Welcome to the Eddy Effect™ — a seemingly endless loop of obstacles customers can’t escape. Customers become stuck in this loop every day, negatively impacting their experience, trust in the business and, ultimately, the bottom line.
To increase their revenue, maintain customer loyalty, improve customer retention and make stronger, customer-centric business decisions, healthcare organizations must listen to their customers’ conversations occurring in their contact centers. Why? Because these conversations contain the most relevant and potent insight on customer perceptions of your business.
Issues cost organizations and patients
Disruptions, obstacles and other customer pain points affect healthcare organizations’ bottom lines. We know this because more than double the amount of customer conversations focus on managing the administrative and business side of healthcare compared to those about clinical care. Customers are telling us their frustrations, with common topics like:
- Not getting a promised call back.
- Confusing claims and claim denials.
- Financial assistance.
- Insurance plan selection.
- Medical coding errors.
- Missing or incorrect patient information.
- Patient assistance programs.
- Prior authorizations.
The healthcare industry is complex, and customers are ill-equipped to navigate between their insurance company, pharmacy and provider — and understandably so. Unfortunately, 25% of interactions result from these disruptions, with consumers failing to get the answers or support they need at the expense of their health and well-being.
Healthcare organizations’ bottom lines are hurting when you factor in the $3.8 million average cost associated with agents’ time and resources. It costs an organization $726,000 each year, on average, to resolve customer disruptions — disruptions that, by their nature, are 100% preventable.
Clearly, this problem is significant — and expensive. But organizations have an option: They can listen to their customers directly to understand what problems to solve.
Listening for better business decisions
When healthcare organizations leverage AI technology and listen to their customer voices, they directly (and positively) impact their profitability. A large-scale listening strategy enables companies to identify, quantify and address underlying reasons causing disruptions in their customers’ journeys. But the sheer volume of conversational data (think: recorded calls, chats, emails) makes it impossible for an individual or even a dedicated team to listen, analyze and extract insights.
By listening directly to their customers, businesses receive nearly instantaneous feedback that uncovers pain points and areas of success about the true customer experience — insights allowing swift adjustments and informed decision-making.
Listening at scale pinpoints where issues originate and helps businesses identify and resolve root causes of friction along the customer journey. If you’re committed to building a more quality-focused, proactive and customer-centric approach to improve outcomes and inform business decisions, consider the following best practices:
- Start by establishing scorecard benchmarks to quantify feedback you’ve configured to align with your specific business KPIs and requirements.
- Listen directly to customer conversations. Using artificial intelligence (AI) helps organize unstructured data by adding categories, search capabilities, tagging and sharable audio libraries.
- Sample individual agent calls to identify coaching opportunities, training needs and moments for managers to provide notes and constructive feedback.
- Rely on recorded conversations to provide QA guidance on appropriate vendor feedback for improving consistency and sharing insights on nuances within specific programs.
- Harness AI, ML and automation to analyze much more than the typical 1% total volume most organizations analyze (with humans) to gather a more comprehensive, holistic view of customer aggravations negatively impacting the business.
Customers are the center of a healthcare organization’s universe. Listening directly to their voices empowers organizations to identify and resolve the primary sources of customer friction, stop unnecessary waste and craft an ideal customer experience that gains — and keeps — customers’ trust and improves retention.