Medscheme, SA`s largest medical aid administrator, is aiming to save a substantial amount over the next two years with a 7.5% increase in productivity in its new national call centre using eContact Solutions`Quintus suite of products.
"The greatest benefit to Medscheme is the central repository of all client details," says Kevin Wright, director inland operation for Medscheme. "No matter where in the country a call is received, the agent handling the query has immediate access to full details of all previous interactions, even if they are only a few hours old and were done in another province.
"Medscheme administers 40 medical aids nationally, mostly corporate entities, each with their own rules and regulations. The new Roodepoort, Gauteng, contact centre, administers 35 of these medical aids directly, taking up to 25 000 calls per day through 750 seats, 450 of which are linked directly into the Quintus system.
"The figures make it one of the biggest call centres in this country," says Rob Salvado, director of eContact Solutions, a CRM business solution provider, which represents Quintus in SA. "Apart from the status associated with such a prestigious centre, the implementation was also one of the most interesting, as the software had to be customised to meet the demands of a medical aid environment," Salvado says.
The customised version of Quintus which Medscheme uses is called MedQ, and is used to log all contact client details, no matter if by voice, fax and e-mail (or even through "walk-ins" - the Roodepoort contact centre`s foyer is equipped to handle personal visits as well). MedQ ensures that all outstanding queries are escalated as a part of a comprehensive workflow, and that the number of calls per agent is monitored through volume management applications; and that intelligent call routing procedures are followed.
Corporate accounts serviced by Medscheme include Omnihealth, Bonitas, SABC, Rennies, Barlows and Wits University, among others. The contact centre is open from 8.30am till 9pm, although at 5pm, the call volume drops and all queries are then routed to Medscheme`s contact centre in Durban, which is also underpinned by Quintus.
"Quintus makes it possible for us to take queries anywhere nationally and ensure that the next day an agent answering a query in Johannesburg has access to the previous evening`s Durban contact details," continues Wright.
In addition to the between 20 000 and 25 000 calls per day, the centre also receives around 3 500 faxes and a few hundred e-mails per day, all of which have to be integrated into the customer contact detail record.
Medscheme had been using a homegrown product, which had no workflow capacity. As the call volumes increased - by about 6% per year - it became vital for a workflow system to be introduced.
"Apart from the workflow demands, we needed a product which had escalation procedures, could integrate all mediums of client contact and which would create a central data repository accessible nationally," says Wright.
"In addition, it had to be adequately supported within the country and support full CTI. Lastly it had to be able to integrate with our back-end systems," he says.
Quintus met all these specifications and the decision to purchase was made early in 1999, with about two months of customisation being necessary before the product was launched in Durban in December of that year. The Roodepoort centre opened in October 2000 as part of a consolidation process of call centres serving Gauteng - cutting the number of centres in Gauteng down from nine to one.
"Since October 2000 over one million contacts have been logged in the system," says Wright. Increased productivity has come about through the generation of productivity statistics and the subsequent correct deployment of the workforce.
Quintus` flexibility and its ease of customisation enabled Medscheme to integrate its back end legacy systems into the customer contact screen, so that operators can easily check on every aspect of a particular member`s medical aid status. This is vital when at least 65% of all calls coming into the centre are from suppliers - doctors and clinics - checking the status and fund availability of individual users.
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