Unable to guarantee enough agents would be available at any given time to provide the required service level, CentraCare Health contact center leaders in 2017 couldn’t permit agents to work from home. But they knew that would have to change when they launched CentraCare’s first, centralized contact center.

Leaders would need to give agents new work-from-home and flexible scheduling options—well ahead of what the 2020 pandemic would force upon other providers—and expand key services to 24/7 operations. They would have to do it all while continuing to deliver the same superior level of care patients had come to expect.

It was clear CentraCare’s existing, spreadsheet-based approach for managing schedules and call quality no longer would suffice.

Leaders needed a sophisticated solution to help them effectively, efficiently manage a diverse workforce while ensuring high-quality service.

After determining neither Verint nor NICE could match Calabrio’s workforce and quality management capabilities, CentraCare selected Calabrio ONE workforce optimization (WFO) to power its new, centralized contact center.

With Calabrio, agents can easily view all agent schedules, see the forecast, enter PTO requests, and set exceptions to accommodate meetings and training. Calabrio’s intraday management capabilities enable managers to easily schedule overtime or backfill a shift when an agent needs to sign off early. Managers can also augment set schedules using Calabrio’s dynamic availability—where agents select the times they’re available to work—and dynamic scheduling, where agents select the specific schedule they will work. They can also use dynamic scheduling to give tenured, high-performing agents scheduling preference.

Managers also use a point-based system to quality-control all teams—nurses, schedulers and providers. First, 1-2 calls each week are monitored and scored using five parameters: greeting, discovery, solution/technical, closing/technical and KPIs. Then, to inspire individuals to exceed baseline expectations, Calabrio is set to auto-fail agents who don’t meet requirements and assign zero points to team members doing only what’s expected.

And, to ensure a high level of service and protect itself against liability, CentraCare uses Calabrio to record calls handled by agents and the screens of remote workers—recordings which are then archived for seven years

Using Calabrio, CentraCare successfully, efficiently and remotely trained 20 new hires who enable CentraCare’s contact center to answer approximately 1,800 more calls per day.

Now, nearly all CentraCare contact center agents work from home. Despite this shift—and the expansion of patient scheduling, nurse triage and telehealth offerings to 24 hours per day, seven days per week—CentraCare now can ensure a consistent, high level contact center service quality.

In addition, all agents are happier thanks to the expanded visibility and schedule control enabled by Calabrio’s self-scheduling capabilities. Agents fielding patient scheduling calls, Registered Nurses offering triage support and Advanced Practice Providers seeing patients via telehealth can all easily manage their own schedules and availability from wherever they are. Without needing assistance, they also can easily find someone to cover their shifts, see who’s filling in for them or coming on next, and find the best time to take a break.