By Bell Business Markets team
VHA Home HealthCare delivers a better experience with an integrated call centre
"Our On-Demand Contact Centre and our client information system are powerful tools ... Integrating (them) has really brought us to the next level."
VHA Home HealthCare (VHA)’s clients rely on the company’s personal support workers and other healthcare providers to help them live healthy lives at home. When they have questions about those services, they want to be able to connect immediately with someone who can answer them. Being transferred between agents or waiting for a call back takes time and can lead to unnecessary frustration. While VHA was already using Bell’s On-Demand Contact Centre (ODCC), Chief Information Officer Alistair Forsyth saw an opportunity to enhance customer service by integrating that solution with VHA’s client information system.
"We recently did some restructuring to make sure the right people were in the right places," says Forsyth. "The next step was to make sure we optimized our technology, too."
Meeting client needs faster
VHA provides home health support services for more than 100,000 clients every year. When those clients or their families have questions or concerns, the customer service centre is the first line of communication. Because the nuances of services and coverage are unique to each geographic region, call centre agents were trained to take calls for one specific region only. But sometimes it could be difficult for clients to connect with someone in the right region who could answer their questions. Getting the information they needed might even require multiple phone calls or waiting for a call back.
"This could be a big problem for some of our clients and staff," says Forsyth. "If a client needed to cancel a visit, but they couldn’t get a hold of the appropriate person at the office and had to leave a message, there was no guarantee anyone would hear the message in a timely way. So we had personal support workers going to appointments and the client wouldn’t be there."
Even when clients did reach the person who could answer their questions, the process of finding and bringing up their information in VHA’s client information system could take several minutes.
"We knew ODCC and our client information system were both powerful tools to enhance the service our agents provide. So, integrating the two made perfect sense," says Forsyth. "But we needed help to bring the two together."
The best of two technologies
That’s why Forsyth engaged Bell to develop a solution to improve call routing and integrate the call centre tool with their client information system. Now, every caller’s phone number runs through the client information system so they can be routed to an appropriate regional agent. The integration also automatically brings up the client’s account on the agent’s screen, so they don’t have to spend time searching for the correct account.
This helps clients get the information they’re looking for faster and more reliably. It also helps ensure that agents receive appointment cancellations and other important messages in a timely manner, preventing unnecessary trips and freeing up time for other tasks.
The importance of co-design
Forsyth was especially impressed at how the Bell team took the time to understand VHA’s workflow, and how they worked closely with the VHA agents who would actually use the system to co-design the solution. Collaboration was one of the keys to the success of the initiative.
"Having our agents involved early was huge. ODCC is a very powerful and flexible tool, but there is a learning curve," he says. Getting a group of agents familiar with the integrated tool right away meant that they could help train others and act as champions to secure buy-in for the change.
The new solution has enabled more clients to get their issues resolved in a single call and has improved service personalization. As a result, clients feel more valued and more confident in the services they receive. It has also increased the efficiency of VHA’s customer service centre, enabling the company to shift and upskill team members to focus on more complex tasks and enhance other areas of the business.
What’s next
Forsyth is thrilled with how well the new integrated solution is working, and is already thinking about how to evolve the system to provide further enhancements that will help improve health outcomes for clients across Ontario.
"Integrating our technology has really brought us to the next level, and I'm looking forward to seeing what else we can do."
