Mar 29 2014
Parlance Corporation today announced a new partnership with Doctors Community Hospital (DCH) of Lanham, MD. The 219 bed community hospital has implemented Parlance's Operator Assistant™ automated call handling solution to improve service levels to callers, manage operator call load, and reduce operator services costs.
"Our operators were frequently overburdened, leading to long hold times and poor service levels for doctors, family members, and other callers," said Dale Savoy, Telecommunications Manager at DCH. "Our operators also act as an answering service for 300 doctor's offices in surrounding communities, and needed more time to serve these revenue generating activities."
Parlance worked with DCH resources to develop customized Operator Assistant applications to improve service levels to callers and reduce operator call load. Parlance service engineers and dialog designers urged DCH to move away from traditional directed dialog approaches to automation ("Please listen carefully. To reach Medical Records say "Medical Records" or press 1…") and utilize Parlance's new smartDialog™ technology to offer callers a more simple and intuitive caller experience.
Callers to DCH are now greeted with a simple branded greeting ("Thank you for calling Doctors Community Hospital, who would you like to reach?"), and can immediately ask for their destination. Those with specific destination requests (employees, staff, departments, etc.) are quickly connected, while callers who are unsure of their destination are connected to an operator.
Operator Assistant offloads between 50-60% of all operator calls daily, resulting in significantly reduced hold times, and a more consistent caller experience. This has allowed DCH to reduce operator staffing costs annually by 4X their Operator Assistant investment.
"The Parlance service model and the dedication of their employees are remarkable," continues Dale Savoy. "They've delivered everything they've said they would, and they're constantly monitoring and refining the system to make it really work for us. Our callers are happy, our doctors are happy, and our executives and board members are happy. Parlance has been a complete success here at DCH."
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