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A large university medical center, as a leader in medical innovations, improves and saves lives. In 2004, US News and World Report ranked one such center in California as one of the top 10 hospitals in the nation.

“Despite skilled operators and recognized call center technologies, our Operator Services Department was not providing the level of service appropriate to a world-class medical center. IPI did a focused, thorough assessment of our Call Center environment and proposed a solution that delivers the results we need well in the future.”
Director, IT-Telecommunications

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Background
  • The Operator Services Department was experiencing business process, technology, management, and operations problems that negatively impacted responsiveness to callers and overall departmental performance. More than 20% of calls were routed incorrectly.
  • Operator Services was not meeting industry-recognized performance standards because of technology implementation problems, poorly documented policies and procedures, less than adequate supervision, and a lack of formal training and accountability.
  • Due to the frequent rotation of residents, many calls were mis-routed. Approximately 50% went to wrong numbers, numbers that did not exist, or to staff members who no longer worked at the university.


    • The Challenge
  • Voice Recognition Operator (VRO) technology—typically able to relieve burdens on operators— was not working well.
  • Agents had to search several paper and online directory databases, resulting in slow or unreliable call directing.
  • Operator cost analysis revealed very high cost-per-scheduled-minute, as well as very high cost-per-minute for talk time.

    The Solution
  • Technical support was improved, and formal vendor relationships were established with technology providers.
  • IPI improved the VRO technology, and integrated the automated voice recognition solution with the Peoplesoft® HR database to reduce the calls that required an operator.
  • Additional application work was carried out to integrate the desktop CTI application with the Peoplesoft database to provide agents with accurate information.
  • Agent accountability was structured and enforced, reducing walk-away time. Formal performance evaluation policies were introduced, along with labor productivity reports and a productivity performance matrix for senior management. Supervisory roles and responsibilities were defined.

    The Results
  • Agent Productivity increased from 23 to 50% utilization.
  • Improvements to VRO technology reduced agent-directed calls by 30%.
  • After integrating directories with the Peoplesoft databases, the accuracy of the directories improved by more than 25%, and the number of mis-routed calls was reduced by 95%.
  • Integration of the Peoplesoft databases and related applications resulted in an administration cost savings of $50,000 per year that was previously required for the out-of-sync databases.
  • Staff was reduced from 14.5 to 10.5 full-time employees.
  • Overtime decreased to an average of 40 hours per month—from more than 200 hours— producing significant savings for the university.
  • Call abandonment rate dropped from 10% to 4%.
  • Average call response time decreased from 32 to 18 seconds.

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