Healthcare Engagement Company Improves Patient Well-Being with Automated Scheduling
CHALLENGE
Elevating Standards and Efficiency Through Cloud Adoption
In today’s global economy, digital transformation has been a top priority for a vast majority of enterprises, including healthcare. Many organizations have already embraced digital transformation as a way to streamline communication and enhance patient care. As operations migrate to cloud-based applications, companies are able to process data faster while improving key business functions such as virtual care, remote health assistance, and staff availability.
Our customer, a WebMD company, is a leading health engagement provider with over 40 years of experience delivering well-being and educational solutions that improve health outcomes through clinically driven behavioral change. By offering personalized assessment tools, coaching programs, and technological advancements, they helped hundreds of thousands of consumers lower health risks, reduce healthcare costs, and achieve a better quality of life.
Facing growing customer demand, they are able to successfully implement an automated engagement platform that took the patient healthcare journey to new heights. By introducing a highly customizable and scalable online appointment scheduling system, they not only increased customer engagement and satisfaction rates but also lowered operational costs while improving staff efficiencies.
SOLUTION
A Case for Care
The company chose SUMO as its customer engagement partner due to the ability to provide a highly customizable scheduling software solution that would power its mission to improve public health through information and one-on-one patient education.
Through an extensive discovery process, they recognized that SUMO’s self-scheduling website, appointment reminder engine, and integrated calendar management features connect patients to medical services in a quick and efficient manner regardless of time zone and location. SUMO’s proven ability to deliver a personalized customer experience by matching users with a region-specific healthcare provider or specialty service with smart matching and routing was one of the main key capabilities that attracted them to the platform.
RESULTS
Achieving Process Automation and Improving Customer Experience with Smart Scheduling
The SUMO Customer Success team partnered with the company’s IT administrators to leverage the software’s out of the box functionality and develop a user-friendly online scheduling process that enabled patients to connect with health coaches in a timely and error-free manner. In order to effectively connect patients with health coaches, they turned to SUMO’s native ability to cover all customer touchpoints within the framework of the existing infrastructure. Without the need for costly software modifications and operational changes, they effectively integrated an automated scheduling system that ensured the best possible outcomes for its patients.
SUMO’s development team first analyzed and assessed current systems and business requirements to determine the framework for integration. Within the project scope, the team has built a customized platform that allowed the staff to see appointments in a client’s time zone, match individual patients to the appropriate team members, and allow them to work with the same coach or nurse throughout the entire program.
An ability to reroute patients to appropriate resources in case of scheduling conflicts and out of the office events was another valuable feature that helped ensure staff availability and considerably reduced the number of missed and rescheduled sessions. Their team was impressed by the software’s scalability where mass-reassignment of appointments can be done with just one click of a mouse.
Additionally, the implementation of the brand new health and wellness appointment scheduling software ensured full automation. As a result, spending countless hours on manual tasks quickly became a thing of the past. A simple “Schedule an Appointment” link on the website was a sure way to allow patients to schedule a desired appointment at a time that’s convenient for them, thus reduced manual scheduling by at least 25%. Automated text messages and calendar reminders also helped minimize no-shows and improved staff utilization.
As for the patients, allowing them to schedule their own appointments from any device not only increased the number of successfully completed sessions but also improved client engagement and helped patients achieve desired health goals faster. Customer satisfaction soared resulting in an influx of new business referrals and a high return on investment.
Overall, they successfully achieved the goal of arming patients with fast and easy access to the support they need ensuring the highest possible success rates. SUMO Scheduler became a game-changer that took the organization to the next level of customer engagement.
