AI Virtual Agent Selection, Implementation and Support Keys to Success

Artificial intelligent virtual agents (VA) are becoming more widely available in all industries.  With the recent pandemic, call center resources have been limited and those working have been overwhelmed with a large increase in call volume.  In the healthcare industry, VA’s can be a great benefit to both patients and employees who are trying to get help or answers over the phone or through online chat session, but these VA’s can also be a source of frustration if not implemented correctly.  The benefits of a good implementation are many.  Patients and employees don’t have to wait on hold for an operator, their questions can be answered 24x7 without the need to increase call center staffing, call center staffing could be decreased or deliver a better experience for those who need to speak with them, and the list goes on.  There are several keys to success in implementing a solution to address this need. 

The first key to success is choosing the right vendor or platform to work with.  In my opinion as a solution developer who usually prefers to build solutions internally, this is one actually solution where I would recommend finding a good vendor partner to work with.  The right vendor needs to satisfy the following requirements.  They need to have a proven platform with a functional customer portal which you can view for metric monitoring, have visibility into each interaction between the caller and the VA, review the call recordings, the ability to internally tweak/refine the AI use case on the platform portal for optimization, the ability to provide a warm handoff to a live agent when needed, ability to interface with your EHR or other identification systems and has a price structure that will allow you to scale to multiple use cases without breaking the bank.  When working with a potential vendor, remember that as a potential customer, you should be able to negotiate a pricing model that works for you, even if it isn’t in line with their “standard” pricing model.  A true vendor partnership in this area requires that both the vendor and you the customer need to benefit from the partnership.  If scaling the solution is cost prohibitive, it isn’t the right solution for your organization.

The second key to success is to work with the business owners to clearly define the scope of the use case.  Its important not to over or under define the options available through the virtual agent.  The goal is to give the caller the ability to either get all the way to the answer they need, or get directed to the “correct” live agent that can assist them.  In some instances, forwarding the caller to a live agent is a good workflow.  In these cases, the goal should be to not send the call to a generic operator, but to intelligently forward the call to a live agent who can actually answer the question asked.  To ensure the caller reaches the virtual agent when appropriate, any initial IVR or phone menu needs to be clear so that the caller only gets to the virtual agent for the reason they are calling.  Working with the business owners on the verbiage used by the VA is also critically important.  If the language used isn’t clear, the caller frustration can increase dramatically as they just want an answer to their question.  It is also important to make the most of the interaction by checking, for example, if the patient is currently registered with patient gateway, if not, it should send the link via text to their phone or email.           

The final key to success is to continue to optimize the VA post go-live.  By analyzing the detail call conversations with the VA, you will find where the callers are experiencing issues/confusion or where they are trying to do something that the VA can’t do.  A good practice is to have the VA ask the caller, when the caller askes to speak with a live agent, the reason for their call. 

“Virtual Agents can be a powerful tool for an organization and are the way of the future.”

 This will help you to determine if either your use case should be expanded to include this need, or if you should modify the IVR or phone menu to clarify what is or isn’t included in the VA menu option before the caller reaches the VA.   You as the customer must be proactive and review the portal information frequently.  At first go live, I strongly recommend that you perform a daily review to ensure you have no big gaps in the workflow.  The vendor should help with this review as well, since they have the expertise in this area, they should help guide you on how to address issues found.  But to be clear, the callers interacting with the VA are your customers, so you are ultimately responsible for the experience. You must remain vigilant in this area.  Nobody wants to get a complaint from a patient that the VA is a problem.  You will probably get some, no matter how well you do with the install and maintenance, as some people just don’t want to speak with a bot.  As we move into the future, that attitude should decrease, so you are positioning your organization for the future.A few use cases that we have implemented or are in the process of implementing include the following:

Patient facing VA to assist with

Patient Appointment Support

Appointment information (i.e. date/time, location, doctor, etc)

Appointment changes (Cancel, Reschedule)

Covid Pre-screening

Referral queue management

Outbound calls to patients from referral queue to schedule appointment

Employee facing VA to assist with

IT Support Center

Support Ticket creation

Support Ticket updating/status, and

Password Reset.

Virtual Agents can be a powerful tool for an organization and are the way of the future.