Northwell Health – Managing Using Information Systems
Customer relationship management is one of the main strategies used by companies to maintain customers and attract new ones for continued business growth. The strategy is used to manage the interactions between a company and its future and current customers by providing a better way of addressing customer issues. In the modern, highly competitive business world, it is important for every organization to ensure that it has a smart and efficient customer relationship management framework. Most organizations are, therefore, using contact centers to achieve this. These centers are usually specialized, dedicated, and centralized operation centers for both outbound and inbound communication handling, where employees using computers make outbound or receive inbound telephone calls. The use of contact centers has become prevalent in the healthcare center, especially due to the growth of telehealth and emergency response services. Companies in the healthcare center mainly use contact centers to provide medical assistance to clients and follow up on the progress of their health. Organizations, however, need to keep updating the use of contact centers because, according to Pearlson et al. (2016), sustainable competitive advantage can only be achieved is only achieved if a company continues innovating and protecting its resources against substitution, imitation, and transfer. Northwell Health is one of the healthcare organizations that have been using contact centers to stay in touch with its clients. The revenue cycle contact center, which is one of the departments at Northwell Health, is experiencing a high abandoned rate and low answered calls rate with productivity leakages for their inbound call center, which affects customer experience, quality services, and revenue. This report focuses on the plan to improve the abandoned rate, bring efficiencies, enhance productivity, create a new reporting structure, motivate the environment, and increase revenue and the important factors that help to improve customer service and set a high standard of quality services.
Plan For Improving Abandoned Rate, Bringing Efficiencies, Enhancing Productivity, Creating a New Reporting Structure, Motivating Environment, and Increasing Revenue
Improving the abandonment rate requires ensuring that there is enough staff to attend to clients when they call. This will be achieved through outsourcing. Outsourcing refers to the practice of contracting all or some of a business function to a company specializing in that function(Hirschheim& Dibbern,2009). The revenue cycle department will establish a business contract with service providers in various contact centers to answer some of the calls made by clients. This will not only improve the abandonment rate but also avoid resource drain in the organization and reduce costs associated with the initial set-up and ongoing operation of the contact center function, which is not the main competency of the organization. Outsourcing will also increase productivity because the organization will be able to respond to customer queries since there will be no abandoned calls. Employees currently working in the revenue cycle department’s contact center will also have more time to address serious customer inquiries hence increasing productivity.
Revenues will increase due to increased customer satisfaction and reduced operating costs because outsourcing reduces the costs incurred in maintaining contact center facilities and technologies, staffing costs, and operation costs. Clients also get to only pay for the services they directly need because there are no payments made for idle time. Employees will also be motivated due to increased work flexibility because they will only be receiving the most important calls and following up on calls that had been made initially to ensure that customers are satisfied with the customer services rendered. This will contribute to increased revenues because motivated employees are highly productive. Revenue increase will also arise from enabling the company to gather as much data as possible about their clients because the outsourced contact centers have the expertise to capture and manipulate different types of information from the calls made by customers because they have experience in talking to different types of customers from various businesses. The company will also increase revenue due to proper customer relationship management because outsourced contact centers conduct thorough call monitoring to ensure that their staff handle calls professionally. The staff will also be trained in coaching and monitoring strategies.
The revenue cycle department will also use in-house staffing to address the issue of abandoned calls. This will include training current employees to work in the contact center. The training will include strategies that employees can use to forecast and schedule calls. According to Zeynep Aksin et al. (2007), learning how to schedule calls is one of the most important concepts in training in call centers. Appropriate call center systems will be put in place to ensure that employees in the centers are notified whenever a call comes in to avoid abandoned calls. A systematic approach will be developed to forecast workload, calculate staff requirements, and create staff schedules that effectively meet the company’s goals. The recruitment of the employees to work in the call centers will be done using a joint effort by the human resource department and call center. Data and voice telecommunications services will be offered, and equipment for automatic call distribution and other related technologies will be selected and enforced. The contact center will also include a customer satisfaction assessment process that regularly assesses satisfaction and retention. A system of metrics will also be implemented to measure and report on performance regularly. The contact center staff will also develop a technique for distributing and assimilating business intelligence in the entire organization.
The plan also includes telecommuting, where some employees answer calls off-site in the same way they would if they were in a contact center (Matos & Galinsky,2015). This strategy will help in motivating employees due to flexibility in their schedule because the employees understand the valleys and peaks of calls on a daily basis hence setting appropriate times for the two situations. The company can also increase productivity by attending to many customers per day because there are many agents and staff receiving calls both on-site and off-site, hence reducing the abandonment rate. The productivity of employees will further be enhanced by telecommuting because of higher job satisfaction. Employee productivity will also be increased because employees will have fewer interruptions distracting them, and they will choose the best location to receive calls and respond to employee inquiries. Increased productivity will result in increased revenue. Telecommuting also reduces operating costs and introduces a new reporting structure where employees need to regularly inform their superiors of the context of their calls and record and forward the recorded call to supervisors for assessment.
Important Factors Which Help to Improve Customer Service and Set a High Standard of Quality Services
One of the factors that help to improve customer service and set high standards of quality services is accessibility. When customers call contact centers, they expect to receive a fast response and get their concerns addressed within the shortest time possible. Accessibility also increases a customer’s confidence in the company because they view easy accessibility as a sign of legitimacy in the services or goods provided by the company(Kansal,2012). Accessibility is also associated with reliability, which includes providing customers with the information they need within the shortest time possible. Reliability also considers the customer’s ability to get a resolution on the first call. Customers prefer getting a resolution for their problem from the first customer care agent they speak to and avoid making callbacks because their queries were not resolved. Contact persons, therefore, need to ensure that they offer the most appropriate solution by engaging the customer to get a clear picture of their problem instead of rushing to provide a solution after the customer mentions their issue.
The second factor is service quality. According to Chicu et al. (2019), high-quality services contribute to increased customer satisfaction. However, the quality can be affected by external factors such as the attitude of the customer service provider and the performance of the company’s systems. Employee attitude may reduce the quality of service when a customer considers the customer service to be rude or harsh when addressing inquiries. The performance of company systems, on the other hand, considers the average time a customer waits in queue before speaking to a customer service agent, abandonment rate, percentage of blocked calls, percentage of first call resolution, and the time the customer takes before abandoning the call. Waiting time contributes to customer satisfaction if the customer is subsequently offered the quality of service and information expected. Call abandonment is considered to be the most prevalent reason for poor service quality. Customers who are forced to abandon a call due to various reasons, such as long waiting times and lack of a response, are not satisfied and may continue calling back until they get the assistance they need. Therefore, high standards of quality incorporate adopting the right attitude when communicating with customers and responding to calls within the shortest time possible to avoid queuing the customer for too long(Kansal,2012). Service quality is further affected by the effectiveness of the encounter. Effectiveness is achieved when a customer feels satisfied with the feedback they receive from the customer service agent. This includes whether the customer’s issue was resolved on the first contact, whether an escalation of the issue, and whether additional follow-up on the issue was required.
The third factor is the content of the interaction between the customer service provider and the customers. Customer service providers are required to exhibit high levels of professionalism and ensure that the content they discuss with the customer is within the customer’s inquiry (Kansal,2012). High-quality interaction is characterized by professionalism, empathy, and the ability to elaborate on the information needed by the customer. Customer service agents should also ensure that they observe etiquette and ask the customer whether they have any additional questions after the call to ensure that they are satisfied with the information they get. This will not only improve customer service but will also contribute to a high standard of quality because the needs of employees are put first.
Conclusion
Communicating with customers is one of the most effective strategies that organizations can use to understand customer needs. It is, therefore, important for organizations to invest in proper customer relationship management. In the current digital world, effective customer relationship management includes the use of contact centers to ensure that customer needs are addressed wherever customers they arise. Contact centers are also essential in ensuring that the organization gets appropriate feedback. The plan suggested for Northwell company’s revenue recycle document includes ensuring that the company has the right number of staff working in the contact center through outsourcing, telecommuting, and in-house staffing. The study has also established that there are various factors that need to be considered to improve customer service and set a high standard of quality services. The main factors are service quality, accessibility, and content of interaction between the customer service agent and the client. The suggested plan can, however, be amended based on the changes in the rate of call abandonment to ensure that the organization settles on the most economical and effective strategy.
References
Chicu, D., Pàmies, M. D., Ryan, G., & Cross, C. (2019). Exploring the influence of the human factor on customer satisfaction in call centers. BRQ Business Research Quarterly, 22(2), 83-95. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.brq.2018.08.004
Hirschheim, R., & Dibbern, J. (2009). Outsourcing in a global economy: Traditional information technology outsourcing, offshore outsourcing, and business process outsourcing. Information Systems Outsourcing, 3-21. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-540-88851-2_1
Kansal, P. (2012). undefined. SSRN Electronic Journal. https://doi.org/10.2139/ssrn.2062829
Matos, K., & Galinsky, E. (2015). Commentary on how effective telecommuting is? Assessing the status of our scientific findings. Psychological Science in the Public Interest, 16(2), 38-39. https://doi.org/10.1177/1529100615604666
Pearlson, K. E., Saunders, C. S., & Galletta, D. F. (2016). Managing and using information systems: A strategic approach (6th ed.). John Wiley & Sons, Inc.
Zeynep Aksin, O., Lerzan Örmeci, E., & Karaesmen, F. (2007). Workforce cross training in call centers from an operations management perspective. Workforce Cross Training, 211-240. https://doi.org/10.1201/9781420005349.ch8
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Question 
Managing Using Information Systems
Company Name: Northwell Health
Company Type: Healthcare
Department: Revenue Cycle
Summary: The revenue cycle contact centre is experiencing a high abandoned rate and low answered calls rate with productivity leakages for their inbound call centre, which affects customer experience, quality services, and revenue.
I would like to share the plan to improve the abandoned rate, bring efficiencies, enhance productivity, create a new reporting structure, create a motivated environment, and increase revenue.
Also, I will highlight the important factors that help to improve customer service and set high standards for quality services.