As lockdowns and restrictions begin anew in the UK and Europe pharmaceutical and government organisations are clearing a difficult path to recovery with the COVID-19 vaccine. Amidst massive logistical challenges in distributing, administering and monitoring them, organisations are trying to move faster than ever before to communicate with stakeholders about the vaccine rollout.
At the heart of all these challenges are people. Gaining the public’s trust and cooperation is essential. The Public will be looking for supportive assistance and reassurance from professionals and experts in an uncertain time. All the while health departments and governments may face staff, budget and resource constraints when it comes to educating people about the new vaccines, much less administering them and providing ongoing support.
At TTEC, with decades of experience guiding organisations across different industries in transforming customer/member/public sector experiences while also reducing costs, we know there are critical steps to building and managing positive customer experiences. We’ve outlined real-world examples of how digital innovation combined with human expertise can enable key players to quickly mobilise trained staff to provide fast vaccine support and drive success rates through CX.
Building trust
Concerns about the effectiveness of a coronavirus vaccine and the unprecedented pace of vaccine development have left some skeptical about the safety of COVID-19 immunisations. In a recent survey from the University of Oxford on adults in Britain, 72% are willing to be vaccinated, 16% are unsure and 12% may delay or avoid altogether.
Officials will need to be transparent in guiding the public through the steps of vaccine development, distribution, administration and tracking. Proactively explaining vaccine efficacy and safety testing measures will be critical to curbing the rise of doubt.
This is where well-trained, experienced contact centre agents equipped with effective technology solutions play an important role in communicating public health information about the vaccine and promoting confidence and uptake.
Nimble support
Flexibility and agility will also be important. As the vaccination process unfolds, health departments and pharmacy services will need to quickly ramp up and scale down customer support as needed. One Government department did exactly that when it experienced an unprecedented surge in unemployment claims at the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic.
In a partnership with the department, TTEC delivered fast results using cloud and automation technology to deflect calls from the department’s at-capacity system and a team of 30 experienced at-home agents to answer calls and lighten the in-house agents’ workload. Using at-home agents enabled the department to rapidly expand its capacity, and scale back when call volume reduced and by routing calls to the appropriate resource—AI or human agent—claimants could file claims and get their questions answered with minimal wait times.
Speed to ramp
Rapidly training many employees in the collection and analysis of vaccine data, including keeping track of who has received which doses, appropriately escalating and reporting reactions to the vaccine, and ensuring that immunisation targets are being reached, among other requirements, poses another challenge.
Equipping agents with customised digital learning tools, including AI-powered simulations and skills and competency assessments is one of the most efficient ways to rapidly train a large group of people. For instance, because of a surge in e-commerce activity, one of the world’s leading online retail marketplaces needed to remotely train and deploy hundreds of agents across several countries and time zones to monitor transactions for fraudulent activities.
We collaborated with the client on identifying specific topics for a customised virtual training programme that accounted for the top volume drivers to keep the training focused and increase efficiency. To further expedite the programme, we ran four parallel virtual batches which were monitored and observed by programme-certified training and operations leaders to assess training efficacy.
All training batches went live as scheduled and we succeeded in ramping up to 170 team members in less than two months. In fact, remote training throughput came in at 91 percent compared to 88 percent in a brick-and-mortar contact centre
Help is coming
The magnitude of the challenge that Europe faces in rapidly distributing, administering, and monitoring the coronavirus vaccines as they become available can’t be overstated. And while there isn’t an easy solution, customer experience leaders know that gaining consumer trust is the first step to success.
Contact us to learn how TTEC can provide vaccine support, quickly and efficiently.
