Leading Healthcare Provider Improves Customer Support and Sales with WhatsApp Powered by edna and the edna Chat Platform

A leading medical services provider with six clinics and 600 doctors catering to over 65,000 commercial clients sought to transfer its customers to digital channels for day-to-day interactions, automate routine queries, and also improve agent efficiency.

The Client

The client — European Medical Center (EMC) group of companies — is a leading private chain of clinics operating in the European region that provides healthcare services across 57 departments via 600 globally renowned specialists who look after over 65000 patients.

Challenges

Lack of Online Appointment Booking Services: The provider faced a major hurdle in that it did not have any online booking services where clients could easily book, re-schedule, or cancel appointments. This was indeed a handicap in a digitally connected world, where their clients were accustomed to using online services for nearly everything, from ordering a cab, transferring money, buying clothes, or even ordering food with a single click. Neither did the provider have a system where all communication history of that client was stored, so in case a client had to reschedule an appointment they would have to call and repeat all their personal information again for the clinic to be able to identify them and then change the booking. The entire process was painstaking for both the clients and the clinic, and the provider faced a real risk of losing clients to more digitally savvy competitors. In this world, it was not enough to have highly qualified doctors, a robust digital ecosystem was also needed to succeed.

Inefficient Contact Center Operations: Another challenge was to cater to the steadily growing patient base using the existing contact center reps. Hiring more people was not just more expensive, but also time consuming as they needed to be trained adequately. Also using operators with medical knowledge to handle generic queries (such as how to get there, parking facilities available, hours of reception, etc.) was a waste of resources.

Solution

To overcome these challenges, EMC decided to take the digital route. It set some specific goals:

• to reduce the number of voice calls, and transfer about 20% of customers to digital channels
• to automate typical requests (about 25%), such as queries about the doctor’s working hours
• to replace SMS messages with those shared on messenger

By making these changes, EMC wanted to reduce the number of lost calls (LCR), improve its NPS score, and launch sales in messenger platforms (with conversions of at least 2-3%).

To streamline its communication, EMC approached edna and implemented its chat center. This unified platform helped to bring together all communications across digital channels (chat on the website, chat in the mobile application, instant messengers). Earlier, customer service reps would have to open different windows to answer chats coming in from different sources (say website, mobile app, or a messenger). This significantly slowed down the processing of requests. Post implementation of the chat center, reps could reply to all non-voice communications coming in from different channels in a single window.

EMC also added a WhatsApp Business Platfrom powered by edna to its stack. The implementation was completed in a few days. The chatbot was initially launched at one of the clinics and subsequently scaled to all the other clinics. This channel was aimed at enabling clients to easily reach out to the clinic for appointment booking and other queries virtually over a platform they already used. The bot also came equipped with a built-in “Knowledge Base” module that made it easy to quickly answer routine customer queries.

The WhatsApp Business Platform enabled a variety of use cases for the clinic, including:

• Booking, re-scheduling and cancelling appointments
• Booking a nurse for at-home diagnostic tests
• Sending reminders about upcoming appointments
• Answering queries about clinic timings, addresses, doctor fees, etc.

Results

These implementations proved to be highly beneficial for EMC. Almost 30 percent of clients started preferring WhatsApp as the primary communication channel – bringing down the number of voice calls significantly. As a result, the provider’s phone lines became more accessible for patients with emergency cases. The chain was also able to reduce the number of lost calls and improve its Service Level KPI. WhatsApp’s automated chatbot was able to close 30 percent of all queries, which were typically similar to questions put on the voice line earlier. In general, reps were able to manage more than 500 dialogues per day without the clinic having to hire additional staff.

Customers were delighted to quickly receive accurate information without having to call up the clinic and be put on hold. The clinic was able to reduce the number of lost calls and also increase its NPS. Answering queries generated on the WhatsApp channel also helped EMC to improve conversions.

Results at a Glance