Consistency of Service in At-Home, Outsourced and In-House Agents Key to Customer Loyalty

This healthcare provider ensured new staffing models didn’t undercut customer loyalty by ensuring quality across agent populations.

Results at a Glance

• Higher overall quality & global consistency
• Higher claims processing accuracy
• Reduced claims processing time
• Higher new employee retention and quality scores

Key Initiative
The call center was staffed with a combination of at-home and on-premise agents, as well as offshore outsourced agents, with a total agent population of 3,000. The cost savings were significant, but quality—more specifically the consistency of quality service delivery—began to suffer and threatened customer loyalty. The complexities of the healthcare industry made constant agent training and coaching a necessity. Agents also needed to develop problem-solving skills and techniques to successfully address a variety of customer types (customers, administrators, doctors).

Solution
For a global workforce, classroom training would have been costly to implement, logistically difficult, and a drain on staff productivity. Instead, the company chose a solution that could be delivered directly to the desktop of every call center employee, regardless of their physical location. Customized training modules were delivered automatically to agents during periods of low call volume or during regularly scheduled intervals. Training content was tailored to the needs of each agent based on performance and quality monitoring systems as well as supervisor input.

These short, but engaging learning breaks became integrated into agents’ routines and quickly drove up quality metrics without affecting productivity. Because training sessions were customized to each agent’s needs, it did not matter if the employee was on-premise, at home, or even halfway around the world.

Impact
Global consistency and higher overall quality were achieved—two key ingredients for improving customer loyalty. Other benefits to the company included higher new-employee retention, a flattened learning curve, and higher new-employee quality scores. Across the board, claims processing accuracy increased while processing time was reduced. Most importantly, labor costs and customer loyalty now have more of an inverse relationship.