Decentralized Health System + Syllable

Summary of Success

Never-before-seen visibility into caller experience

A large, decentralized physician organization partnered with Syllable to understand and benchmark ambulatory patient access over the phone. Using Syllable's proprietary Listening Mode technology, the phone calls from a representative set of 29 practices across 5 states were evaluated to understand the end-to-end caller experience, from first dial to final hangup. Practices included primary care, specialty care, and patient access centers. The locations received 80,000+ calls over a 2 week period, all of which were used for analysis. The Listening Mode report provided answers to key access and experience questions for the organization’s leadership.

The Challenge

Understanding patient access over the phone

Leadership described their challenge as transforming a confederation of hundreds of small businesses into a singular brand promise for their patients. Further complicating things, the practice sites vary in core technologies and processes such as telecom systems, EHRs, administrative and reporting structures, and clinical specialties.

In an era where reducing variability is the goal, this type of operational environment is a challenge. Without a consistent solution deployed across all sites of care, it is extremely difficult to deliver a consistent brand experience, benchmark performance across sites, or prioritize resource allocation.

The Solution

End-to-end visibility into all inbound calls

Syllable’s Listening Mode is a proprietary diagnostic that uncovers the entire caller journey, assesses system performance, and determines opportunities for improvement. The large ambulatory organization partnered with Syllable to conduct this assessment and uncover deep and broad insights into their caller experience.  The system strategically selected 29 practices as a diverse, yet representative, set of locations whose insights could be extrapolated across the broader system. Over the course of 2 weeks, Syllable recorded all inbound calls to these locations, from first dial to final hang-up, then analyzed the calls to create a comprehensive insights report.

To conclude the engagement, Syllable presented to the organization’s leadership with a thorough analysis of the caller experience and recommendations to improve it.

The Results

Deep understanding and roadmap to advance access

Syllable helped the organization understand the #1 way patients were engaging with their system in never-before-seen granularity. For example, Syllable identified that 47% of calls were regarding three topics: scheduling and appointment management, care team questions, and prescriptions. However, 38% of calls failed to successfully speak with a staff member, due in part to IVRs not having the right set of options, broken lines, and long hold times. Additionally, though a majority of callers tried to reach the practices during business hours, afterhour callers were the most frequently missed opportunities. By segmenting these insights by location and call type, Syllable was able to help the large decentralized organization determine the most valuable opportunities to prioritize for operational improvements.

These handful of insights, among many others, provided the organization a fact base of data to measure future results against and a clear call-to-action report to help fuel organizational change. With Syllables insights, the system is now able to make strategic resourcing decisions tailored to geography, site type, and patient needs.

Project Timeline

Week 0: Prepare for kick-off

Week 1-2: Record & analyze calls

Week 3-6: Analyze calls and prepare report

Week 12: Presented analysis at earliest availability of system leadership

Key questions answered by Listening Mode