Harmonising customer experience around the globe

Medical technology powerhouse

Siemens Healthineers is a life sciences and medical technology giant with a presence in 150 countries and over 120 years of experience. Every day, an estimated 5 million patients worldwide benefit from its innovative digital technologies and services, including diagnostic and therapeutic imaging, laboratory diagnostics and molecular medicine.

Often the first point of contact, its contact centres keep customer service on track — from coordinating engineer appointments to resolving technical queries from clinicians who need on-the-spot answers. Previously, these siloed operations ran on unreliable PBX systems that stifled collaboration and service improvements.

“We were stuck in the analog world and wanted to get to a customer-centric model that was always-on and always there for our customers,” said Jochen Hostalka, Senior Vice President IT for Siemens Healthineers. “That meant finding a rock-solid cloud platform to support our digital partner ecosystem — one that allowed us to standardise, quickly execute and harmonise customer experience around the globe.”

Seismic shift in IT delivery

Starting with Gartner research and contact centre service rankings, Siemens Healthineers went through a five-step evaluation, including product demonstrations and candid conversations with several similar-sized customers of their shortlisted vendors as well as in-depth proof of concept phases with each of the final candidates.

“This enabled a decision to go with Genesys based on performance, support, price point and ease of implementation,” added Hostalka. “We were new to their technology. So, it was reassuring to have an expert partner in Cognizant with over 100 deployments under their belt.”

“We completely redesigned our call flows and rolled out a new global contact centre solution in just eight months — connecting 2,200 agents in 236 offices and 35 countries — a remarkable achievement that would have been unthinkable before,” said Hostalka. “And we’ve also established end-to-end 24/7 support around the globe.”

The Genesys Cloud platform can easily be integrated with the company’s existing internal ticketing system and agent workflows. Moreover, new sites can be remotely provisioned much faster, typically between six to eight weeks, using the same Genesys Cloud instance. “Managing IT projects from a distance, in different countries with different cultures and people you have never met, used to be a challenge,” added Hostalka. “Now, we have happier end users and just don’t see any issues when we go live.”

Always there for healthcare professionals and patients

Every hour, an estimated 240,000 medical equipment items from Siemens Healthineers are used worldwide. Now the company can better serve its users by routing calls based on importance. For example, intelligent routing policies within Genesys Cloud can distinguish between a general practitioner carrying out a routine consultation and a clinician with a patient undergoing an urgent scan. And, when those calls come in, they’re handled instantly.

“Our agents used to have various screen pops and would have to move between five or six different applications,” said Hostalka. “Now, everything’s in one place, which means faster service and less stress. Plus, all our contact centres use the same number range and dial plan. So, it’s much easier to collaborate.”

One of the biggest benefits has been more meaningful and accurate reporting. “In the past, we didn’t know what we didn’t know,” added Hostalka. “For example, trying to work out reasons behind negative customer feedback was mostly guesswork. From day one we were able to see every interaction that touched the platform.”

Resetting for every scenario

Moving to the cloud has other advantages, too. When a massive carrier outage occurred in North America, the company rerouted all traffic to its European centres, ensuring zero downtime or lost calls. “With our old telephony systems, we could easily have been off the air for a couple of days,” said Hostalka.

Likewise, Genesys Cloud edge servers ensure voice calls and associated data never leave a nation’s borders, a strict requirement under Chinese privacy and security laws. And when the COVID-19 pandemic struck, Siemens Healthineers agents moved to working remotely by connecting to Genesys Cloud via their own browsers — minimising disruption for customers.

In the future, the company plans to extend services to multiple countries in Asia, Europe and Latin America as well as Canada and will migrate email and chat. “Scope creep is the classic pitfall of global IT projects, adding time and increasing budgets,” concluded Hostalka. “I can honestly say we had none of that. We’re ahead of the curve.”