BPO innovates with CCaaS for better customer experiences

Headquartered in Houston, Texas, with a large, dedicated office and workforce in the Philippines, SupportZebra provides a range of customizable BPO solutions, including 24/7 customer support, technical support, lead generation, content moderation, and virtual assistance.

SupportZebra offers dedicated, trained teams to handle customer interactions across multiple channels, helping fast-growing SaaS and e-commerce businesses scale their operations, reduce costs, and enhance customer experiences.

SupportZebra builds customer support teams with a positive, family-like culture, a “heard” mentality, and a focus on community and giving back. Through their partnership with the Make a Wish Foundation, the company has granted more than 1,000 wishes to kids with critical illnesses.

Incumbent system issues drive a catalyst for change

SupportZebra initially sought a new customer service solution due to a specific need for an existing U. S. healthcare client, TelemedRN. TelemedRN operates a 24-hour medical answering service for hospice and home-care patients to coordinate care with healthcare providers and medical professionals.

SupportZebra provides Registered Triage Nurses that are trained to provide clinical assessment, judgment, implementation, and evaluation of the plan of care. Moreover, SupportZebra participates in contributing to quality assurance across hospice and home health coverage.

While onboarding several new registered triage nurses for TelemedRN, SupportZebra realized that its incumbent system had challenges that needed to be addressed for handling time-critical patient care.

– Supervisors were unable to access the system remotely The incumbent system would not allow SupportZebra to put agents into a ‘Do Not Disturb’ status remotely. The result was that calls were still coming in, but they were not always promptly answered. This issue was a critical failure when dealing with patients urgently needing to speak to a nurse or healthcare professional.

– Inability to monitor live calls Because Quality Assurance (QA) and trainers were not able to monitor live calls, they couldn’t give agents timely feedback and training to improve the patient experience.

– Different tools for each channel (voice, email, and SMS) Agents were constantly switching screens to manage different communication channels and fulfill their daily duties, making them less productive.

– Not able to implement After Call Work (ACW) Follow up in the healthcare industry is critical, especially when it relates to patient notes. Unfortunately, the incumbent system had no way to implement After Call Work and key details went missing.

These specific issues were the catalyst for SupportZebra to look for a new solution for their client TelemedRN.

Seamless migration to a new CCaaS

SupportZebra’s Innovations Director Dino Flores realized during the vendor evaluation process that there was a more significant opportunity for the company to consider. Specifically, the opportunity at hand was to differentiate itself in the BPO space as an innovator focused on helping its customers deliver better customer experiences, rather than compete in the race to the bottom on price.

After researching several solutions, Flores and the SupportZebra team decided on a solution from Local Measure, a leading CCaaS (Contact Center as a Service) and advanced voice solutions provider integrated with Amazon Connect, AWS’s AI-powered contact center solution.

Since then, Local Measure has been acquired by Zendesk with the product now called Zendesk Contact Center. Built on Amazon Connect, it provides enterprise-grade reliability, scalability, and security.

Zendesk Contact Center unifies digital and voice channels within a single intelligent platform, making it easy for SupportZebra agents to deliver voice service without switching between tools. It’s enhanced with AI tools like real-time sentiment analysis and automated transcription.

There were several key factors that made Zendesk Contact Center the right choice for SupportZebra including:

– Consumption pricing was a better fit for TelemedRN and other SupportZebra clients, rather than a licensing model.

– An omnichannel out-of-the-box solution offering voice, chat, SMS, email, and social.

– A flexible, scalable solution that makes it easy for SupportZebra and its clients to quickly scale up and down as required.

– Reducing complexity by consolidating reporting and training across the organization, freeing up time for agents and supervisors.

– Ability to serve clients on a single platform.

The Results

Currently, TelemedRN agents are using Zendesk Contact Center to triage out-of-hours nursing services by answering calls, documenting notes, and making outbound calls for follow-up. In addition to Quality Assurance, team leads and managers can monitor calls and the queue in real-time.

Other benefits of the Zendesk Contact Center implementation include:

– Reduction in Average Handle Time: 30 percent to 50 percent.

“With one customer, we’ve already been able to bring down average handle time by 29 percent and increase average order value by 18 percent,” says Nathan Yap, CEO at SupportZebra. “Zendesk Contact Center has been invaluable in helping us securely drive automation use cases using AI, resulting in savings for our client and a better overall experience for the end customer.”

– After Call Work (ACW): Implemented After Call Work with disposition codes. Agents are more mindful of sending reports within 5 minutes of ending a contact.

– Better training and timely feedback for customer service teams: Due to a hybrid model, call monitoring is done remotely. This feature helps team leads and trainers provide timely feedback.

– Call recordings: Easier to track and pull up call recordings. Supervisors, QA, and trainers can listen to calls in real time making it easier to onboard and guide new agents remotely and mentor low performers to provide best-in-class service

– Visibility of agent availability: If agents are experiencing downtime, administrators or supervisors can remotely change their status.

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A forward focus on innovation

SupportZebra wants to continue to innovate well into the future as its unique business model focuses on making life easier for its agents, as well as delivering a better customer experience for clients.

In the case of agents, SupportZebra offers a hybrid model that allows agents to work from home, as well as onsite. The secure and cloud-based platform of Zendesk Contact Center makes this possible.

Additionally, Zendesk Contact Center provides the company with the ability to quickly understand and meet client needs without the need for expensive internal technical resources. That allows the team at SupportZebra to focus on innovating and delivering bespoke solutions to provide the best possible customer experiences for their clients.