Laya Healthcare improves customer service and operational efficiency with Otonomee
Laya Healthcare revolutionized its customer service approach, improved operational efficiency, enhanced the customer experience, and ensured long-term success as one of Ireland's leading healthcare insurance providers.
The Challenge: Improving customer service and operational efficiency to provide best-in-class service to a growing membership base
Recognizing the changing landscape of healthcare and the growing demands of their members, Laya’s Customer Care Operations Manager, Ross Mooney, understood the urgency of improving their customer service framework if they wanted to provide best-in-class service to their growing membership base.
High call volumes, issues with SLA management, and a need for a better member experience were key concerns, as Laya recognized the need to overhaul its customer service framework to meet the needs of over 600,000 members and align with their long-term strategic goals.
Key issues that needed to be addressed:
- Increasing member satisfaction and contact center response times.
- Creating digital channels to address changing member needs.
- Developing a comprehensive knowledge base to support organizational initiatives.
- Building a scalable omnichannel solution to enable seamless member interactions.
- Improving recruitment, onboarding, and training processes to better support operational teams.
The Solution: Strategic consulting and technology-driven optimization
Knowing Laya would need a partner with extensive experience in customer service excellence, Ross selected Otonomee for a hands-on consultancy project to conduct a thorough review of their contact center operations and operating model.
The hands-on guidance approach aimed to provide actionable recommendations and innovative solutions to help Laya achieve service excellence and operational alignment with its long-term strategic goals.
After a review of the current state, Otonomee developed a strategic roadmap that guided improvements in Laya’s omnichannel customer service delivery, operational frameworks, and technology use. This included upgrading their contact center, creating digital channels, and implementing a knowledge base to enhance member interactions.
Additionally, Otonomee helped to optimize their recruitment, onboarding, and training processes to build a scalable and efficient operation.
Establishing a roadmap for success: customer service, operations, technology
Otonomee developed a strategic roadmap that guided improvements in customer service delivery, operational frameworks, and technology use. This roadmap was designed to prioritize immediate enhancements while aligning with Laya's long-term goals.
- Strategic Roadmap Development
Otonomee began by analyzing identified gaps and created a detailed roadmap aligned with Laya's 5-year vision. Prioritizing actionable recommendations for the first 90 days, ensuring a focus on immediate improvements while keeping long-term objectives in mind.
- Operational Framework Enhancement
Otonomee was instrumental in guiding and supporting Laya's operations team as they overhauled their customer contact center operating framework, including recruitment, onboarding, training, and workforce management. This resulted in a standardized and more efficient operating structure across the organization.
- Technology Optimization
Recognizing the importance of technology in improving both agent and customer experience, there was a need to upgrade Laya’s current technology and tools. This included implementing dashboard reporting mechanisms, optimizing call routing processes, and automating quality assurance procedures.
The Benefits: Achieving service excellence and a streamlined operation
As a result of Otonomee's hands-on strategic consulting, Laya Healthcare experienced significant improvements in their customer service operations.
Looking at their customer experience, Laya achieved consistent SLA delivery, with a 15% increase during peak periods compared to the previous three years. There was a significant increase in Net Promoter Scores (NPS), indicating improved customer sentiment and loyalty. There was also a significant reduction of 1.5 minutes in Average Handling Time (AHT) compared to the previous year which indicates a notable improvement in efficiency and productivity within the customer service operations, allowing for quicker resolution of customer inquiries and issues.
Looking at Laya’s operational efficiency, there was a 63% reduction in employee attrition, and productivity increased by 0.7%. Additionally, by introducing a Capacity Planning process the business was able to upskill several agents before the peak period, further improving not only employee experience but also the quality of the service provided.
The implementation of a standardized operating framework has not only improved operational efficiency within the customer contact center, but it has also been applied to other areas of the business, promoting consistency and alignment across multiple segments.
The success of this implementation was evident in the positive feedback from Ross Mooney at the end of this consulting project.
"Otonomee’s experience and expertise were invaluable in guiding us on this journey and they proved to be a strong partner for us in achieving our goals. I would have no hesitation to partner with Otonomee on other projects in the future."
