VoltDelta Is the Right Prescription for Rx Outreach
Rx Outreach is a nonprofit mail-order pharmacy and patient assistance program that delivers low-cost prescription medications to qualified patients nationwide. Since its inception in 2010, the organization has saved its customers about $277 million in drug costs.
Until recently, though, frequent phone outages were frustrating Rx Outreach's customers and hurting the company's bottom line. "A lot of phone calls were dropping on us," recalls Jeff Clark, chief information officer at Rx Outreach, which is based in St. Louis. "[People] are calling in because they need medicine—and in some cases, because they need medicine right away—and if they can't get through, it's a very big deal."
In June, Rx Outreach installed VoltDelta's hosted solution in its contact center, which employs about 25 agents. The deployment included VoltDelta's inbound and outbound interactive voice response (IVR) system, automated call distributor (ACD) with skills-based routing, call and agent screen recording, a surveying tool, real-time reporting, and content management, which allows Rx Outreach to modify IVR prompts and dialogues to quickly adapt to customer inquiries. Customers can use the IVR to enroll, test their eligibility, check their order status, refill prescriptions, and more. A separate line lets them connect to staff pharmacists for questions about specific medications.
VoltDelta's IVR, ACD, and call recording are tightly integrated, which helps to maintain the context of an interaction, even when customers switch channels.
In any given month, Rx Outreach can receive between 55,000 and 70,000 inbound calls. It makes about 50,000 outbound calls to remind patients about prescription refills and notify them when their orders ship. For these reasons, it needed a solution that was robust and highly scalable.
The new system also had to offer an easy combination of speech recognition and keypad entry, create a feedback loop, and allow Rx Outreach to expand existing channels of communication and add new ones, such as text messaging, as the company grows.
VoltDelta was chosen because of its expertise in offering solutions that would integrate well with Rx Outreach's systems and help it realize significant cost savings.
The system has saved Rx Outreach about $10,000 a month in phone costs alone. "As a nonprofit," Clark says, "we save people money by keeping our own costs down."
VoltDelta's IVR solution has led to further savings through increased use of voice self-service. Calls completed without agent assistance have risen between 5 percent and 10 percent, with 32 percent to 36 percent of all calls completed entirely through automation.
The outbound calling application has further reduced the number of inbound calls and led to more repeat business.
"Happier customers are more likely to continue to order with us," Clark says. "We're attracting new customers and serving our existing ones better."
Since deploying the VoltDelta solutions, Rx Outreach's customer satisfaction scores have jumped five points, from 88 percent to 93 percent. Some customers have even provided unsolicited donations to assist Rx Outreach with future endeavors.
Based on its results to date, Rx Outreach has plans to deploy VoltDelta's WhisperTel technology to reduce the need for agents to ask callers to repeat information. Instead, the solution will deliver a brief recording of what the customer said in the IVR just prior to transferring to the live agent. Rx Outreach also plans to extend the technology to include the finance department.
"Rx Outreach is really about helping people. VoltDelta helps us keep them happy too," Clark says.
The Payoff
Since deploying VoltDelta's cloud contact center technology, Rx Outreach has achieved the following results:
- a savings of $10,000 a month in phone costs;
- a 5 percent to 10 percent increase in voice self-service usage, with 32 percent to 36 percent of calls handled entirely through automation; and
- a 5 percent increase in customer satisfaction, from 88 percent to 93 percent.