ivr case study
Q4 2015
Together we optimized the Interactive Voice Response (IVR) menu to alleviate Saint Anthony Hospital's overextended short-staffed nursing teams by optimizing caller journeys.
HARMONIZING WORKFLOWS
EMPOWERING TEAMS WITH OPTIMIZED IVR MENUS
ROLE
IVR Designer,
CX Researcher
" These patients are really unwell and we are short nurses again. Why won't anyone help us? ”
INSPIRATION
Already combating hospital-wide staffing and process constraints against increasingly violent patient population, nursing teams exhibited symptoms of burnout.
Unable to alter the patient influx, I prioritized efforts on a long standing issue forcing understaffed teams to sacrifice quality in-patient care for telephonic customer service redirecting misrouted calls at the cost of department funding heavily reliant on patient satisfaction ratings.
120+ nurses
" This is impossible without more staff. "
" but we looked into this issue already. We have a dedicated team of operators to reroute calls. The nurses are just going to have to answer all calls at all times. ”
REENVISIONING STALEMATES
Unable to pinpoint any IVR set up or technical errors in call routing, the overextended nursing staff interpreted status quo as apathy for their daily constraints resulting in employee disengagement in the face of worsening patient satisfaction based budget cuts.
PROBLEM FRAMING
The impasse highlighted a need for data. Leaping towards hope, I persuaded the department director to allow me to collect data tracking Customer Experience, but also mapping employee pain points.
I began by conducting Stakeholder Interviews with department directors, AM/PM charge nurses, and hospital operators. I also involved the PBX, and maintenance departments to identify overlaps in workflows.
DIAGNOSE
user pain points;
identify opportunity
TRANSFORM
processes & teams,
create value
GROW
team engagement,
reduce churn
TRACKING PAIN POINTS
Working alongside the nursing staff, I routed misrouted calls for 3 months from 9AM to 3PM Mondays, Tuesdays, and Saturdays to provide dedicated customer service while also collecting CX journey data.
ANALYZING PAIN POINTS
Patterns across paths also elucidated opportunities for improvement. Months of incoming call data revealed the exact gap between actual caller journeys versus user goals navigating 18 psychiatric units across 2 hospital campuses, over 170 internal extensions, and 6 main public phone numbers.
"I haven't heard of HIPAA and don't care. I just want to know if my loved one is okay. I'm going to keep calling until one of you caves."
65% of callers
"I just want to know whether my wife checked in to your facility! Why can't anyone tell me that--she's MY wife!"
45% of callers
" I already talked with the operator. They're the ones who keep sending my call through here. Who do I have to talk to get the information I want?! "
55% of callers
CX GOALS
Together, we identified three primary Customer Experience goals informing our phone tree design decisions.
Digestible menu Options
preparatory Messaging
on HIPAA
Clearer Menu Architecture
PIVOTAL FINDINGS
Analyzing the months of caller data directed attention to the South Campus phone lines. Evaluating contact information published across channels, I identified an old phone number listed on Google.
The Midtown Campus director explained this number to encompass both South and Midtown campus units before the move years ago. Navigating the discontinued phone number's automated menu revealed the source of the misrouted calls.
WIREFRAMING
Nursing unit by unit, I organized the phone tree into wireframes, aligning the voice recorded options, the external and internal extension numbers, menu actions.
EMPOWERING TEAMS
Cognitive Walkthroughs revealed several extensions were designated for specific roles such as the charge nurse, medicine station, unit supervisor, and the unit therapists.
I leveraged these additional discoveries to empower internal communications. I dispersed and educated teams on utilizing the internal extensions to facilitate workflows.
Another great find was learning that dialing an internal number ensured caller ID would display to the receiver thereby empowering teams to screen, but also prioritize calls according to level of urgency.
OUTCOMES
Leadership conducted focus group tests to fine-tune the messaging, and received the official green from the legal team. The PBX operators reprogrammed the IVR menu aligning current departments with the correct extension numbers per the phone tree wireframes. The new menu was implemented after two 4-hour recording sessions of the caller-facing messaging all programmed on an old ANSI standard computer terminal--1993's VT520.
