Helping patients live their best lives

Healthcare innovation in the home

With a coast-to-coast US network covering 47 states, AdaptHealth is a full-service medical equipment company. Its tailored best-in-class products and services empower patients to live their best lives — out of the hospital and in their own homes — while reducing the overall cost of care. Making the right impression in a highly competitive market is paramount for AdaptHealth and the role of its 4,500 agents.

“During that first contact it’s really important to make sure the patient or referring party are comfortable and set their expectations around equipment costs, delivery dates and insurance, for example,” said Bill Lewis, Senior Director, Infrastructure and Security Engineering at AdaptHealth.

Single solution for growing pains

Consistently delivering exceptional service became harder as the business grew. The business made several acquisitions over the years, leaving its multiple contact centres tied to disconnected on-premises and cloud solutions, including outdated telephony systems.

Among many technology gaps was the inability to deploy outbound call campaigns, skills-based routing and API-based integrations. Key tasks, like ensuring correct staffing levels, relied heavily on manual processes and people pulling data buried in spreadsheets.

“It was hard to make decisions because we didn’t have information about what our agents were doing, or the ability to predict where our occupancy levels needed to be,” added Lewis. “And we wanted to focus more on core business without the distraction of managing IT and on-site systems. So, we looked around for a single cloud platform that would unify all our needs in one go.”

Smoothing company acquisitions

The results of that search led AdaptHealth to the Genesys Cloud platform for its customer experience evolution, initially for inbound, outbound, email and SMS communications.

“The things that stood out most were simple API connectivity and native workforce engagement management,” said Lewis. “After going live in Pennsylvania, we were able to reuse call flows and code to onboard 2,500 users right across the country in just seven months. That’s a monumental achievement and one we’re especially proud of.”

Quickly standing up acquisitions has seen that number rise to 4,500 agents. “The Genesys Cloud platform is so intuitive we literally train staff in the afternoon and switch over the next day,” said Lewis. “Then a week later we turn on Genesys Workforce Engagement Management and watch service levels go up, and average handle times and abandon rates go down. That’s been the case with every deployment.”

Powerful data insights

Soon after workforce engagement management was implemented, AdaptHealth started leveraging the solution to anticipate issues and determine changes. Forecasting and scheduling times quickly decreased and is now largely automated, saving significant time. Greater resource planning accuracy helped lower call abandon rates by 84% over the year.

“March was our busiest month for call volumes and our service levels hit 92 percent compared to 77 percent the previous year,” said Lewis. “We’ve also improved schedule adherence by 10 percent and achieved a 60 percent increase in agent productivity over 12 months.”

Managers make decisions based on insights using data they didn’t have access to before, such as real-time occupancy rates, sentiment analysis, call transcriptions and topic spotting. While overall average handle time (AHT) has dropped, the company now better understands the more complex topics that extend AHT because they need more emphatic dialogue and support.

Maximising AI and digital channels

Although each local office and brand are distinct, they all leverage the same website experience, which Genesys is also helping to boost. “Genesys Web Messaging is far superior to legacy webchat,” said Lewis. “It means our agents can simultaneously manage six or seven website conversations, plus we get more configuration flexibility. We’re looking to add Genesys Predictive Engagement to give our eCommerce team greater choice over the options they present and make data-based routing decisions.”

For AdaptHealth, the overall goal is to prevent patients from waiting unnecessarily for something they can do themselves. And it wants to ensure their experience and outcomes are the same, regardless of where and when they get in touch.

“When selecting an AI solution, it’s vital as a healthcare provider that we control the source code, which we do with Genesys,” said Lewis. “Functions like reporting and analytics are inherently integrated within the platform. We’re currently rolling out Genesys Knowledge to further deflect calls with AI-surfaced articles and are considering adding Genesys Agent Assist with call summarisation.”

Upon engaging via web messaging, website visitors are greeted by a Genesys chatbot and presented with a menu displaying common requests such as “Ask a billing question,” “Become a new patient” and “Speak with an agent.”

Outbound communications have been digitally enhanced as well. Genesys automatically calls the customer and sends a follow-up text message if they fail to pick up. Likewise, SMS campaigns have been remarkably successful in reminding customers to place orders, obtaining missing medical information and booking appointments. “Many SMS journeys are automatically fulfilled by bots without ever touching an agent,” added Lewis.

Quality-driven experiences

The company’s quality team evaluates one individual weekly score for over 400 employees. “We’re now able to give near real-time feedback, pointing out what agents do well and suggesting areas for improvement like instances when they could rephrase responses or take a different approach to build stronger connections with patients,” said Lewis.

Improvements include a 69% reduction in critical failures and a 12% quality increase with agent scores averaging 96% for the last nine months. They like being able to play back calls and see their scorecards, while managers benefit from having information all in one place.

Call-related activity was among many new insights uncovered. “Our agents were spending up to 93 percent of their time engaged with customers, which triggered requests for additional resources,” added Lewis. “Now, by staffing on demand, we’ve been able to bring that occupancy rate down to the 82 percent range. In addition, new efficiencies and the ability to reallocate resources has generated valuable cost savings.”

Building employee engagement

Gamification has been another game changer. Agents can go to their own homepage to view their individual performance, the latest challenges, group rankings and more. “The tool enables them to see their schedules and where they stand among peers,” concluded Lewis. “They’re also able to set short- and long-term goals, while friendly competition is building camaraderie and making work fun and more fulfilling.”

Looking ahead, AdaptHealth intends to use homegrown AI solutions and Genesys AppFoundry^® Marketplace partner tools to create a holistic digital approach.