Delighting customers and engaging employees

A visionary company with legacy systems

Carestream Dental is transforming dentistry, simplifying technology and changing lives around the world with its innovative digital products and support. From imaging equipment, CAD/CAM solutions and imaging analysis software to practice management and billing systems, the company captures 2 billion images annually to properly diagnose patients, improve workflows and offer superior care.

Carestream Dental has 225 customer care advisors who are globally dispersed at technical solution centers. They support more than 30 products and typically interact with customers through phone, email and chat. With IT complexity growing, the company wanted a more agile, cloud-based business model.

“Managing legacy phone systems with all the associated handsets, onsite infrastructure, ACDs and troubleshooting was extremely resource-heavy,” said Brian Harris, Director, Americas Remote Support, Carestream Dental. “So, when we separated from our parent company and had to stand up a new system from scratch, we looked for one that was infrastructure- and administration-light.”

Shedding restrictive hardware

After exploring its options, Carestream Dental chose the Genesys Cloud platform. “We wanted a solution with the right feature set that was easy to use and a good fit with our disaster recovery plan,” added Harris. “Since then, Genesys Cloud has served us well, efficiently handling around 40,000 calls a month. In addition, Genesys Workforce Engagement Management has simplified resource planning and reduced the time we used to spend organizing agent schedules.”

Building on the agile cloud foundation, the company consolidated 10 discrete call-handling teams into a single proficient, data-driven organization. A key aspect of this modernization was integrating Genesys Cloud with eMite data insights and analytics. This allows the company to establish common KPIs, clear escalation paths and technical support processes consistent with ITIL best practices.

Optimizing employee and customer experiences

Always looking to break new ground, Carestream Dental explored motivation and gamification strategies — and the positive effects they have on employee satisfaction and customer experience.

“Every quarter, we’d disseminate multiple reports, review performance data and provide employees with feedback,” said Harris. “That wasn’t helpful to the individual or the company because it meant both were potentially carrying bad habits and practices for three months.”

With Genesys Cloud Workforce Engagement Management, managers present agents with real-time metrics in an easy, fun way. Now agents can quickly see how they rank within their team on any measure. And they can understand which behaviors they should change to maximize their performance and achieve rewards and incentives.

“Being able to incorporate our knowledge management system was a big win for us,” added Harris. “It gives our agents all the tools they need to do their job in a single view, in the same window they use to handle calls. So, we were able to provide a better experience and quickly secure user acceptance.”

Achieving impressive top-line results

One of the biggest eye-openers was how quickly Carestream Dental saw results. “Our initial goals with Genesys Cloud Workforce Engagement Management were bettering response time, adherence, Net Promoter Score and quality,” said Harris. “After 30 days, we measured impact and saw gains in productivity and customer satisfaction.”

Top-line results included 15% faster response times and a 10% improvement in schedule adherence. And this all led to lower abandonment rates. The company also reached a record NPS rating, up six points from the previous year.

And gamification is breaking down organizational silos.

“We ran a World Cup competition, which gave teams who would not normally interact together the chance to meet, have fun and compete for prizes,” added Harris. “That broke the ice — and now there’s much more knowledge sharing and collaboration. We also use the quizzing function a lot to see how well agents understand topics and new products, uncovering areas where we might need to improve our coaching or training.”

Robust business continuity — guaranteed

Four months after Carestream Dental deployed Genesys Cloud solutions, the company’s foresight and innovative spirit proved pivotal when COVID-19 forced dental practices to close. Previously, legacy technology prevented Carestream Dental from rolling out remote working on any significant scale. But, on Genesys Cloud, the company quickly mobilized advisors and maintained service without any disruption to customers.

“We sent people home from the office with laptops at noon and they were back online with Genesys Cloud in the afternoon — we didn’t miss a single call,” said Harris. “This would have been impossible with our old on-premises solution. Also, by routing everything over the internet and using softphones, our agents didn’t run up charges on their personal phones.”

As customers came out of lockdown and began to reopen, Caresteam Dental chose to partner with call centers around the globe for some support functions. “Extending Genesys Cloud to our partners in global call centers required minimal technical work and only took about a week to configure and add accounts for over 100 new agents,” concluded Harris.