Bankmed, the Cape Town-based medical aid fund administrator, has slashed its lost call rate by 87% since installing a call centre from ATIO. Its lost call rate has dropped from an unacceptably high 40% to under 5%. "The call centre has evolved into a mission-critical function of service-focused businesses," says Ronell Boshoff, Bankmed head of communications. "We`ve positioned our call centre at the core of our business, front of mind when measuring ourselves and our clients` perception of our business."
Bankmed provides fund administration services to many medical aid funds. Its client base includes the largest banking groups in South Africa, such as ABSA, First National Bank, Standard Bank, SA Reserve Bank and Land Bank, and a number of major corporates, including Engen, BP SA, Afrox, Edgars and Foschini. It administers 150 000 principal members across 13 medical aid fund schemes.
Boshoff says Bankmed prides itself on a consistently high level of claim processing and ratification.
"Multiskilling is fundamental to the value of our business and is the primary catalyst of our call centre requirements," says Boshoff. "Telephony is only part of our agents` job description, which includes claim processing, query ratification and verification, fraud detection and customer callback support."
ATIO was identified as a call centre company that could address these needs and design a tailor-fit solution around them. Call centre management can now better control which staff to rotate between different functions, and automate mechanisms for creating overflow teams of available agents.
"100 agents work in teams of eight, excluding a team leader, half of which are logged in to the main incoming lines and the other logged off in overflow groups," she adds. "The call centre automatically balances call load between available agents, calculates the fall-off or lost call rate dynamically and allocates agents from the overflow group to answer incoming calls should the load top predetermined peaks."
Bankmed created a forced overflow situation so calls waiting over 90 seconds are automatically transferred to an overflow agent. AtioCall alerts the overflow agent that calls are waiting and gives him the option of logging in to assist.
"Empowering our agents to make certain decisions about client service levels is an important part of our philosophy that was taken into account in the development stage of the call centre," says Boshoff. "In our previous hunt-line environment, agents had no choice but to answer incoming calls irrespective of other urgencies and without the added benefit of standby groups."
Main and standby agents can choose which scheme`s calls to take and how soon to wrap up the query based on Bankmed`s predetermined quality standards. "We can measure each agent individually and report back to management on the relevant statistics of call duration, call volume, calls missed and peak call times per client," adds Boshoff. "This gives our clients recourse to monitor our service based on the performance reports we generate on their behalf."
Virtual call
"One of our core strengths is the electronic processing system we have in place, and the calibre of staff we employ to run it," says Boshoff. "In this respect, our business needs centre on the extension of our system to incorporate Web-based and e-mail communication, functions that were carefully considered in our adoption and implementation of a call centre solution."
ATIO`s Cybercall technology promises to incorporate electronic feedback directly into the call centre workflow, so that messages received across any medium are processed as part of its standard function.
"E-mail queries are on the increase, as is the focus on Web access to information, including online claims and service tracking," continues Boshoff. "As our call centre evolves into a virtual centre for service and information delivery, new technology will become increasingly important to our business."
Boshoff believes it will also improve the efficiency of multiskilled agents by automating e-mail distribution and linking vital customer information to the front-end interface of the call centre.
"With the level of authority and autonomy our agents are handed in their jobs, it`s imperative our systems support the efficiency we expect in return," she says.
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