Net Promoter Score saw a grinworthy bump of 17%. In just five months. And NPS lift wasn’t even the chief objective. Our client instead prioritized a different, proprietary “helpfulness” performance metric to ensure healthcare advocates in the contact center went the extra mile to create memorable moments.

That’s what happened when a forward-thinking healthcare leader enhanced the member experience using multidimensional metrics that captured nuances beyond NPS and CSAT scores while leveraging AI to customize and deliver precision coaching. The payer focused on helpfulness, the drive to not only resolve issues but to anticipate and respond to unexpressed needs members may encounter along their healthcare journey.

Our team in Cape Town, South Africa, embraced data-driving coaching that elevated performance of healthcare advocates and team leads alike.

Challenge

The vast majority of team leads (90%) were junior level — eager to succeed but lacking leadership skills and experience. Most had been promoted from advocate-level positions. Determining which advocates needed extra coaching, what type of coaching was needed, and how to monitor and measure outcomes was not innate for these new leaders.

Adding complexity to team leads’ workday was an inelegant system for auditing performance management. Documents were manually uploaded to a cloud storage service, which permitted some data and insights to slip through the cracks. There was no means to unify and analyze data to enhance governance around coaching, identify performance issues, or guide coaching toward outliers, for example.

Because operations leadership lacked the same visibility to performance, they were unable to provide team leads the support they needed to succeed.

Our solution

TTEC recommended our client adopt a solution that centralized performance insights and created a single interface for quality monitoring, coaching, learning, and engagement. Called TTEC Perform, the AI-enhanced platform provided a dashboard for team leads to view performance across teams and benchmark against high performer personas; track performance commitments; engage in daily games; and access learning content and self-paced learning.

The performance enablement platform compiled advocate data to create models of top-tier, mid-tier, and low-tier performers. Then, using AI to identify best practices of top performers, TTEC Perform suggested customized coaching to improve performance based on an individual’s strengths and weaknesses. For example, while one healthcare advocate needed to shore up issue resolution skills, another associate needed to focus on a different area, such active listening, empathy, or de-escalation.

TTEC trained team leads how to optimize the platform and developed a balanced scorecard including an advocate “helpfulness” KPI, one of several pillars within Voice of the Customer metrics. Other VOC pillars quantified how easy the process was and how much caring was demonstrated by the associate.

Assigned the greatest weight, the helpfulness KPI was documented by member survey responses that indicated an advocate recognized and acted upon an opportunity to go the extra mile to support a member. For example, if a member asked if a specific provider was in-network and during the interaction also mentioned access to transportation was an issue, an associate proactively suggested additional provider options who were located nearby, a convenience the member may not have considered.

Results

NPS rose 17% in just five months, with the most recent score exceeding the client’s target.

Advocate helpfulness, a leading driver of NPS, was underperforming prior to implementation of TTEC Perform. Just four months after deployment, the number of associates meeting the helpfulness goal rose 25%.

Average hold time (AHT) was reduced and wait time dropped by 13%.

Coaching needs were identified with greater precision and training was customized to the individual advocate. Coaching sessions rose by 226% and coaching time dropped by 21%, freeing up five hours weekly for team leads.

Both advocates and team leads welcomed the new tool. A sampling of feedback from team leads:

“I like having all the coaching docs stored in one location. It is easier to manage and saves time.”

“Advocates are able to review previous coaching docs so they are reminded of the actions and commitments they need to meet.”

“Another great feature is we can incorporate friendly team games to create a fun environment while also helping develop positive behaviors in an engaging way.”