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In this series we will discuss Contact Center industry trends and best practices, as well as sharing success stories and pain points with some of the most innovative professionals in the industry. Join us as we learn and grow together in order to provide world class customer service to each and every one of our clients.
Dave Hoekstra (00:03.308)
Welcome to Working Smarter from Calabrio. My name is Dave Hoekstra. I am Product Evangelist here at Collabrio and we do this podcast so that you guys get a chance to hear about great contact center stories, learn a little bit and have a good time amongst the way. And so we'll try to have a little bit of fun today. I'm really excited today because I have a great guest with me. Someone you guys know, I love talking to people from the UK and this is, this is just another great, exciting day for me.
with me today is the customer services director at Simply Health. And this is a gentleman in that classification that has two first names. So that's where I want to start, Dan. Please, if you could introduce yourself and then tell me what it's like living with two first names as your entire name.
Dan Eddie (00:49.325)
Yeah, thanks Dave. Yeah, so my name is Dan Eddie. Although of course my mother in my infant years called me Daniel, you know, when stuff wasn't going quite right. But you're right, Dave, I do get emails and voice notes saying, Dear Eddie, know, can we do the... I know what I do when I get that, an email or a voice recording is reply with their surname. So Dear Hoestra.
Dave Hoekstra (01:16.502)
Yes. Yeah.
Dan Eddie (01:19.698)
Thanks for your note or thanks for your email. By the way, my name's Dan, with a smile on his face of course, and I put a bit of humour into it. But yeah, there are conundrums with two first names, but it's Dan, Eddie, in that order.
Dave Hoekstra (01:24.492)
Yes.
Dave Hoekstra (01:32.854)
Now, do you have a middle name as well? So when your mother got really angry with you, she just yelled out three names in a row, three first names in a row. There's Daniel, John, Eddie. That's great. All right. Now, okay. So now that we've got that bit of formality out of the way, tell me a little bit about, I'd like to know about Simply Health, right?
Dan Eddie (01:35.765)
Yes, John.
Dan Eddie (01:43.535)
That would be the extreme, right? It's usually just Daniel. That's what I usually got.
Dave Hoekstra (02:01.184)
I know that you guys provide and help with access to healthcare in the UK and the NHS, but tell me a little bit more about what you guys do and then specifically how the customer service arm of Simply Health interacts with their customers.
Dan Eddie (02:16.153)
Yeah, sure. So Simply Health actually has been around 153 years. So longer than the, much longer than the NHS itself and was formed out of a community based funding to gain access to hospitals. you know, think back into, you know, well into the late 1800s, you had people on a Saturday morning walking up and down the streets asking for contributions to a hospital fund.
And if you contributed, you had access to be able to go to the hospital. So, you know, literally access to health care right back 153 years ago. And of course, you know, the kind of formation of how things have changed in the advent of the NHS, et cetera, is kind of where we find ourselves in position today. And you rightly touched, Dave, on our purpose as an organisation. a very purpose led organisation and our purpose is to improve access.
to healthcare for all in the UK. It's a very noble purpose and it needs to be understood in the context of the NHS is fundamentally broken. Getting access to healthcare through the NHS is very, very difficult. If you're able to, it is a wonderful service. There is no doubt about that, but getting access is the key problem for your day-to-day sort of normal things that you would want to access your GP for.
or get a dental appointment or physio, et cetera, you name it, it is difficult and challenging. So we want to improve that access. And never more was that access more important than it is right now when you have the average days that someone's taking off work has risen since post-COVID from five days to 7.7 days in 2024 to 9.2 days off sick in 2025.
Dave Hoekstra (04:12.354)
Wow.
Dan Eddie (04:12.409)
problem is getting worse. There are 2.8 million people off long term sick at this moment in time. There are 27 million of the 35 million employed in the UK who do not have access to a health plan or a dental plan in the UK. So there are loads of statistics, all of which build up to a £150 billion economic deficit to the UK because of absenteeism. And the top two reasons for absenteeism in the UK
mental health and musculoskeletal. So there are some really key ingredients into the problems that not just Simply Health, but other healthcare providers are trying to solve here. And really the unification or the unified view on how we solve access to healthcare has never been more important than it is right now. We've been working with the government to try and improve.
Dave Hoekstra (04:46.007)
Right.
Dan Eddie (05:07.855)
that access to healthcare, particularly from a kind of sort of employer perspective. And, you know, hopefully we can bring real value to organisations that choose us as the provider for their healthcare to their employee base and help to reduce the number of days that people have off sick and the levels of absenteeism. We'd love to be in the position where we are much more preventative than coming in post trouble, if you like, or absenteeism.
and add real value commercially and productivity wise to businesses and then hopefully aggregate that up. And we serve 2.5 million customers today, Dave, we'd love that to be one eight to 10 million by 2030. And then we would have truly delivered on our purpose as an organization.
Dave Hoekstra (05:56.234)
That's amazing. so is that kind of, what is your typical contact look like, right? When a resident of the UK reaches out to Simply Health, are they trying to find access to healthcare? Are they kind of going through the process? What is a typical kind of a daily contact mix look like for you guys?
Dan Eddie (06:13.262)
Yeah.
Dan Eddie (06:17.709)
Yeah, so 2.5 million customers, as I said, you know those those customers will have all patients will also have access to health care and health plan and dental plans. So in the health plan, for example, you might have access to 24 seven to a GP. You might have some dental, you might have some physio. You might even have, you know, access to things like scam and some diagnostic stuff there as well, right? So that might be how you view your plan.
And you are able therefore to claim when you use services, either through ourselves or through credible, certified medical regime such as the hospital or indeed your physio or whatever. So you can claim back that money and you can claim back that back through ourselves.
When you think about that process of what I have access to, how much can I claim for? Can I add more to the plan than I've currently got? Can I add dependence onto that plan? There's a number of questions that our patients and customers have about their plans, their access to healthcare, their claiming capability, their amount that they're going to get back from the plans that we offer. Those are the main reasons for contacting.
Dave Hoekstra (07:44.17)
Excellent. All right. So let's get a little context center nerdy here. Right. So those those contexts that are coming in. First of all, I know you kind of had a bit of a pivotal moment maybe two or three years ago where you decided to update how you do a lot of this. But what was your volume mix at that point? Was it, you know, 90 percent voice and 10 percent email? What did that look like three years ago? And then what does that look like today?
Dan Eddie (08:11.855)
Yeah, well we created, and I've been with Sipdail for a bit years now, but we created a five year vision of how we would transform the landscape. was brought in really to think about how we go from analog to digital and how we, know, to be able to achieve our purpose, we need to be able to grow at scale, right? We need to be able to go from 2.5 to 10 million customers, but not add loads of money into that.
Dave Hoekstra (08:25.933)
Mm-hmm.
Dave Hoekstra (08:37.239)
But not go from 2.5 million phone calls to 10 million phone calls, right? Right.
Dan Eddie (08:41.623)
Well, and add loads of cost into the business in doing so, not just through the reason for contact, but the fact that you need to use a human every time that phone call comes in. So the cost base needed to be much more efficient. We need to be thinking much more about how we develop an ecosystem that delivers efficiency for the business, great customer experiences for our customers and our patients. And also then,
is an environment within which our employees can flourish as well. So we look through those three lenses of business, customer and employee perspective. That's the way we look at it. But when we're creating that five year vision, it really is about transforming that landscape because back in 2020, 2021, we had circa 65 % of all contact was coming through voice and only 12 % coming through chat and the rest was kind of emails or contact us forms.
Dave Hoekstra (09:32.013)
Okay.
Dan Eddie (09:37.711)
And, you know, that was far too channel heavy in terms of, you know, analog and cost in terms of voice.
Dave Hoekstra (09:47.647)
And just to be clear, you no longer have the people walking around with flyers, right? You don't you don't do that anymore that you used to do in the 1800s. OK, just checking.
Dan Eddie (09:55.201)
No, that's right, The way to onboard and indeed claim today is very digital. It's very app-based, it's very phone-based, mobile-based, or indeed sort of iPad-based, depending on the demographic of the patient or customer. looking at that kind of...
profile of contact and the channels we had in existence, it was clear that we weren't giving as many options of how to contact us or channels of contact to get to us, but also, you know, where customers were having problems and issues. And if I come back to the moment of truth for us, it's about claiming, right? When you come to claim, that's a moment of truth. And so going into the app or the portal to claim, well, people had questions at that point.
Dave Hoekstra (10:33.646)
Mm-hmm.
Dan Eddie (10:53.583)
And what was clear to me was that we didn't have any access point within the app or the portal. So we're picking the customers were then for picking up the phone. So actually introducing live chat into the app and the portal has meant that that has become our most dominant channel over the next few, over these past few years, right? And that's deliberate, right? It becomes much more digitally native in terms of how you can contact us. And so live chat now.
Dave Hoekstra (10:59.693)
Right.
Dave Hoekstra (11:13.687)
Right.
Dan Eddie (11:20.207)
It has 55 % of our volume, voices down to 20 % post AI. And the advent of WhatsApp later this quarter, in fact, we go live in February. And then also we're gonna be moving to have a little bit more of what I would call in-app messaging. Now that could be WhatsApp, it could be just generative AI with a...
Dave Hoekstra (11:23.842)
Okay.
Dan Eddie (11:48.239)
with a kind of a bot feature within the app itself that can serve patients and customers more 24, 7, 3, 6, 5, rather than again having a live chat or a human that's just nine to five Monday to Friday type thing, if that makes sense. So what we're trying to do there is expand the channels through which customers can contact us to their preference. We want the ability through AI or human to answer questions 24, 7, 3, 6, 5. And that gives
Dave Hoekstra (12:02.028)
Yeah.
Dan Eddie (12:17.653)
I think the opportunity and also drive the efficiency of our business. We'll come on to how we're doing that in a little more detail that allows us to therefore to grow at scale. that move from 2.5 million patients and customers up to three, up to five, to ten. We have now then a structure that allows us to be more digitally native and use AI through those different channels alongside our brilliant people to serve the growing need for access to health care in the UK.
Dave Hoekstra (12:47.81)
Well, and you kind of said the magic word there, Dan, is we're talking the post AI and that's where I'd like to focus a little bit. And tell me a little bit about your, strategy that you're using AI to start to service these citizens that are out there.
Dan Eddie (13:08.463)
Yeah, I mean, we come back to the five year plan, right? Once we're expanding those channels and looking at why customers are wanting to contact us and obviously helping to solve some of those root cause problems, right? So, you know, year on year, we've seen a reduction of 160,000 contacts, right? As a result of making our claims experience absolutely brilliant. So processing our claims really speedily. We process now all of our claims, 2.7 million claims a year within one day. So 0.84.
was the average time to process a claim. Now that means the money's going to go back into the customer's pocket within 24, 48 hours, right? And that's fantastic. Go back four or five years ago, we were talking maybe over a week before you got your money back. And so therefore we're getting lots of phone calls, you know, as the claim being processed, when am I getting my money, right? Cause 50, 100, 150 pounds is a lot of money in the economic environment that we find ourselves in, right? You want your money back quickly. So sorting that problem out and also when you're
Dave Hoekstra (13:56.162)
Yeah.
Dan Eddie (14:07.649)
in that moment claiming having access immediately to answers means that that experience has never been better. So I don't want that point to go to go without sort of me talking about that because it could be clear that we're actually I'll be just throwing AI at a problem to help it. No, we're not. We're making the experience as good as we possibly can be, but also thinking about how we deploy AI to answer some of the easy questions that our customers have.
Dave Hoekstra (14:25.44)
Yes.
Dave Hoekstra (14:37.218)
That's such a critical part of this process is, know, it's kind of, it's gotten a little bit of a joke in our industry, how you have these CEOs or board members saying, get me AI. I don't care what it does, just get it. And I've always had a little bit of trouble believing that that actually happened until I've had several people say to me, no, I literally had a CTO the other day ask me that exact question.
Dan Eddie (14:37.305)
So.
Dave Hoekstra (15:05.614)
It was like, I'm just trying to get AI somewhere in there. You hear these stories of implementing AI just for the sake of it, because people are asking for it. And it's so important. And that's another, that's a way we try to approach it at Calabrio is it's so not about the tool. It's about how we get that customer experience to that next level without frustrating, without causing more problems. Right. And I, I'd love to hear that, you know, you've, you've successfully kind of made that jump.
And how do you continue to iterate? How do you continue to make that? So you're using agentic AI as kind of a first, is it like a first contact kind of a thing? So when I get in and I try to message the app, I'm actually starting with an AI agent.
Dan Eddie (15:43.759)
Mmm.
Dan Eddie (15:55.565)
So it depends which channel you're in, right? And just to pick up on your point there, yeah, there has to be a reason why, why you're using AI. For us, it's very purpose led, right? We wanna grow that scale, 2.5 million to 10 million for all the reasons and statistics that I gave you at the front end of this podcast, right? Very noble in its purpose, but how do you actually do that? And how you do that...
Dave Hoekstra (16:04.942)
Mm-hmm.
Dan Eddie (16:20.301)
to grow at scale is use AI to do the easy lifting for you, leaving your brilliant people to do the more complex and value-adding work for your customers and your patients, right? And solve problems like, well, what are they ringing for in the first place and how do we solve that problem? You know, can reposition your brilliant people to do better work for the experience that your customers get and add more value to your business, your customer, and indeed make their jobs more valuable and more.
Dave Hoekstra (16:34.03)
Mm-hmm.
Dan Eddie (16:45.583)
I suppose, energize them in terms of curating their own career paths. And we are very much finding that that is the case in a landscape where AI and human are working together. So when we kind of look at that agenda, then in the voice area where we have AI, we will be going generative, generatively into voice AI in February this year. So we go live on the 2nd of February, it is.
And, you know, we've had voice assistants answering all of our phone calls across all of our three contact centers now for two and a half years, resolving at source 30 % of all inbound phone traffic. Now it's doing the work of about 25 people in volume terms, which is hugely significant, right, when you're thinking about a cost base that needs to become more efficient.
Dave Hoekstra (17:26.094)
Okay.
Dan Eddie (17:39.343)
And clearly what our customers are finding is that the AI that exists today is able to answer easy questions or send SMSs that directs them to the place where they can find the information or actually take the action themselves. Right. And then what's coming through then is the more value add more complex work and maybe in some terms it can be a little bit of a upsell, cross sell, or indeed maybe it's a complaint on the odd occasion that we get them.
Dave Hoekstra (17:53.539)
Mm-hmm.
Dan Eddie (18:09.007)
That's the type of work that our humans are now undertaking. And in the live chat space, we have generative AI working in the live chat space. We're growing that capability within our claiming questions that we get from our customers. That's now taking about 50 % of the volume that we get through live chat, and it's resolving about 53 % of everything that it's receiving today. So we're really pleased.
Dave Hoekstra (18:32.149)
Okay?
Dan Eddie (18:38.851)
with the progress that generative AI is taking, autonomous AI is taking, it's really, really delivering value into the live chat space. If we look at email, we're sending around 2000 emails a week using generative AI. Now that still has a human in the loop. If I can very quickly just explain how we've done that. So what we've done is created grounding in our knowledge base with thousands of emails that have previously been sent by our own people.
answering frequently asked questions. We've attached knowledge articles to each of those emails, right? So if you think about how do I change dentists, was the first email we ever sent generatively. We attached knowledge articles to those emails that answered that question, okay? And put 500 of those emails, just answering that one question, into our knowledge base. So when AI is looking at how do I answer the question of how do I change dentists, its grounding is looking at those 500 emails, those knowledge articles, picking up and then going, this is how you change dentists.
Dave Hoekstra (19:11.884)
Yes.
Dan Eddie (19:38.743)
And we were the first in the world as an organization to use Salesforce Generative AI in the email channel. So for a small organization like Simply Off to be first in the world is pretty special. And, you know, that email was, you know, there was an email that came in that said, please can you help me change dentists having a bit of frustration in doing so? You know, can he he just help me? And the brilliant response from AI Generative AI was
Dear Mrs Jenkins, you we're really sorry you're having problems changing dentists. Here's the information you need to change dentists. Follow this link. was beautifully created. Now we kept the human in the loop at that point. OK, so the human can check that, send it and off it goes. But instead of the human building that email to answer it, taking 10, 12 minutes, it now takes one minute for the human to check and send. And when he's sending 2000 emails a week.
Dave Hoekstra (20:23.404)
Yeah.
Dan Eddie (20:32.063)
the efficiency saving nine, 10 minutes of every email builds up again. you know, what we're doing using AI and the voice, which I told you, of the equivalent work of 25 people in the live chat, again, work that humans, you know, don't need to answer easy to answer questions, right? They are much more intelligent and can wait for the more complex value at work. And then you've got these 2000 emails and you know, that's getting, that volume is getting bigger by the day.
Then suddenly what you've got is an environment where questions are being answered by AI and you need less human capability, particularly if you've multi-skilled it, particularly if it's talented and it understands the journey, your people understand the journey you're trying to go on, which is very purpose led. You start to get the harmonization of how best to use AI and your brilliant people to deliver business benefit, great customer experiences, CSAT, trust, pilot reviews, et cetera. And also,
the value they feel about working for an organisation that is thinking about how it grows at scale. Now, what does that mean for us when we grow at scale? It means more people have access to health care in the UK and that they can feel very, you know, really comfortable about and feel as though actually they're doing something that's adding benefit to the wider society.
Dave Hoekstra (21:44.652)
Yeah.
Dave Hoekstra (21:50.732)
I'm sure that putting 12 minutes versus one minute on a bar chart to show productivity increases is a really satisfying thing to look at from time to time.
Dan Eddie (22:02.051)
Well, when you you when you combine our people's efforts and the value that they they're bringing through the multi skilling that they now have. So they're working across all of those channels that I've mentioned, both old and new. And then they're able to answer questions across any product set. Right. So they're much more multi skilled than they were three or four years ago. We're paying them 40 percent more, Dave, than we did four years ago to recognize that value.
that they now bring to our organization. Then you have, I think your people bought into either why, why are you using AI, purpose led, what's going to be the outcome of me working alongside AI? Well, it's going to mean we're going to be more productive and we are two and a half times more productive. can serve, we used to be able to serve about 25 customers in a day through a single channel. We can now serve up to 55 to 60 customers in a day using AI and human through multiple channels, right?
Dave Hoekstra (23:00.311)
Great.
Dan Eddie (23:01.763)
We absolutely are more productive. Now, what does that mean? It means we can grow at scale and deliver on our purpose, right? So again, everything we're doing means that we're delivering on our purpose. And when you're a person trying to understand why we're bringing AI into our environment to do the easy stuff, we can always go back to it's helping us to deliver on our purpose. Why? Because it's enabling us to grow at scale. That makes sense.
Dave Hoekstra (23:07.074)
Yes.
Dave Hoekstra (23:25.771)
Yeah, absolutely. Now, seeing as how you're kind of maybe 40 to 50 % through this journey and you're continuing to move, let's imagine you were talking to someone who hasn't started this journey yet. What have you learned that you wish you knew then?
Dan Eddie (23:44.431)
The first thing is to start it is why do you want to use AI? Why would you want to? And maybe it is a purely efficiency reasons, right? Where we're too cost heavy as a business and we want to take some cost out, right? That can be quite a blunt, but it could also be a rationale, right? And maybe the profit against the cost of the business isn't quite right. don't know, right? Let's use that scenario. Then how are you going about
thinking about where you use AI? And then how would you do that? Where's your first use case? Where's a sensible place to start? Right. And then also, how do you think about then your rationalization to the business of wine? And how do you ready your people to go through that journey? OK, so if you think about what we've done.
in terms of productivity. The best example I always give is, well, how long does it take a human to identify and verify a customer on every call? It's about 30, 40 seconds of effort. AI now does all of that for us. that's thousands of calls and chats and contacts that now AI is identifying, verifying the customer.
you know, again, the integration to our CRM to pull that information up. Yes, that's that customer. They've given us the details. Thank you very much. And away we go. And including vulnerability in that, right? So we can get those people or indeed bereaved customers, et cetera. We can get them to the right place very quickly. Again, using our workforce management tool, Calabrio, to help us do that. And we'll come on to talk about that, I'm sure. But, you know, these types of sort of efficiencies continue then with...
That means if I'm doing identification and verification through AI and at the back end, I'm wrapping up all of the conversational contact and using AI to do conversation summaries in chats, in emails and in voice. What used to take 15 minutes to identify, verify, the conversation or the chat and then wrap it up is now just taking a human seven or eight minutes because AI is doing those other two parts.
Dave Hoekstra (25:56.875)
Right? Right.
Dan Eddie (25:58.851)
which means actually I can have two conversations in the time it used to take me to do all of those three things. So the thought process about how you think about this is really key. And obviously our thinking has evolved over time and we had a real reason as to why we wanted to introduce AI. And you know what I'm hearing is exactly the same as you, is that organizations are just saying we need AI, we need AI.
actually, why do you need AI? What is your purpose? What is it you are trying to achieve as a business? And how do you find that then if you have a reason or you need to achieve a goal, how is it you're starting to use AI and what's your first use case and in what channel might you start to leverage the benefits?
Dave Hoekstra (26:27.661)
Mm-hmm.
Dave Hoekstra (26:50.317)
Now, you've obviously kind of really hit some of the key high points, right? You've said that with productivity and happiness and everything is sunshine and roses and flowers and there had to have been some speed bumps. Have you had any growth issues in trying to make this? Have there been agents who haven't been happy with the process? Has there been customers who have had some issues with it?
Dan Eddie (27:03.449)
Hehehe.
Dan Eddie (27:07.021)
Yeah.
Dave Hoekstra (27:18.389)
Talk a little bit about if there have been any of those kind of things.
Dan Eddie (27:19.62)
Yeah.
Yeah, look, the voice AI was the first thing we introduced and that, you know, there were a small percentage of customers who didn't like interfacing with AI, right? That's the truth of it. And, you know, that's fine, but, you know, equally if they were wanting to speak to a human, we quickly made sure that they were able to do so. So,
Let's identify and verify them through using AI and then get them through to an agent without asking any more questions, but again, that was a point where we had to listen and make that process quicker and slicker rather than asking more questions and just causing further irritation and frustration.
Dave Hoekstra (27:54.871)
Right.
Dave Hoekstra (28:05.653)
Right. Because it is really, it is really tempting to be like, no, no, no, I can really help you. And then, yeah, I've been caught in a couple of those before in my personal life, right? Where, you know, and I think our biggest problem, Dan, is we know too much about how the sausage is made. You know, and it's, know when I call a contact center and I get that, I'm like, look, I already know.
Dan Eddie (28:12.015)
Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.
Dave Hoekstra (28:33.473)
that you can't help me, that I need to get to a talented, empathetic human, right? And so, yeah. And so, okay, it's great to hear. mean, I do want to make sure that we don't always paint the rosy picture.
Dan Eddie (28:36.045)
Just get me through. Yeah, yeah, yeah, that's exactly it. That's exactly it. But but but. No, no, no, and from our own employee base as well, right? I mean, this is a five year service vision would be very transparent about that vision, very transparent about why we're using AI, what we're trying to achieve through productivity and through being able to grow at scale, right? So it'd be very, very clear.
And to the point, Dave, where we've done two Will and Skill assessments of our contact center. And what I mean by that is, Will, do you want to go on this journey? Expansion of digital channels, multi-skilling, using AI sat around you, helping to do your job. Do you want that? Is that part of your own career aspirations and thought process? If it's not, then.
then let's hands and you can move on. Because you'll understand from a purpose led organization of why we're trying to do this and trying to grow at scale. We're not about to deviate from the vision or the strategy. So if it's not for you, shake hands and away you go type of thing. And that has happened because of the full transparency about what it is we're trying to do and how we're trying to do it. The other key factor in there is, of business readiness. I think when we started this out, there was an element of business readiness that we were doing.
But boy, if we strengthen that over time, because we've realized that the secret sauce here is, you know, how do you really help and support your people through the journey? So every single change that happens now, you know, what was the communication like? What was the training like? Did I get a chance to try before it went live? What was the go live experience like? What was the post live? How was I coached? How did he bed it down with me? How did you support me through that process? We call that speed to happiness. So every time we deliver a change,
We ask our people how well did we do and they give us a score of one to ten and it's a scale of speed to happiness, right? Speed to making me happy that the change is being delivered really well. Now we score well, we get seven and half, eight out ten, which is all very good, right? But actually what I'm really interested in was why wasn't it nine and why wasn't it ten, right? Tell me why. Well, I didn't get a chance to play with this tool before we went live. The training didn't cover this particular element.
Dave Hoekstra (30:51.116)
Yeah.
Dan Eddie (30:59.691)
I needed more support about this when we went live because I wasn't able to. So there's loads of great value in the kind of the feedback we get from our people. That means the next time we go through the change, we can improve, we can get better. And we've seen that happen over the last two to three years. So that business readiness aspect, so underrated. I can, you you you have probably come to ask me what's the one thing that you'd say?
to anybody going on this kind of business readiness would be right up there in that kind of top one to two things, right? If you do that and you do that well, you take your people with you. How do I validate that in terms of numbers? Well, my employee satisfaction rates are the highest they've ever been, right? So the end of the year, we scored out of 10, 8.5 out of 10 for employee satisfaction across a whole ram it 40, we use peak on Chatterbox as our.
Dave Hoekstra (31:32.523)
Wow.
Dan Eddie (31:58.223)
as our employee engagement platform and you know, 8.5, which is a kind of employee net promoter score of 60, 60, 62, 63. You know, you can look at it that way. You can look at it through both lenses. So I know that my people are feeling good about working at Simply Health. They're getting paid more for the job that they do. They're being supported through change really, really well and thoroughly.
Dave Hoekstra (32:10.818)
Yeah.
Dan Eddie (32:25.935)
And they and I know that they understand what the future looks like because we're being really transparent about the journey that we're on. So, you know, that's not been an easy journey. And all of this is, what I'm talking to you about now is the learning we've had along the way. Right. But the quick, the quicker you implement that, you know, if I had gone back to the start and we'd be able to do what we do today, blimmin' heck, it would have been, you know, screaming success from word go. But we've learned a lot along the way. We're happy to happy to share that.
Dave Hoekstra (32:52.503)
Yeah.
Well, I think I have a new favorite metric and it's speed to happiness. I think that it's going to replace first call resolution in my mind and what customers should be shooting for, not just with your agents and your employees, but what you you're the from the from a CX experience as well. That's, that's an awesome one. I love that. I'm going to, I'm going to steal that by the way. Um, you know, fantastic. Um, now you mentioned, now you mentioned it. I didn't mention it, but you mentioned the workforce management.
Dan Eddie (33:13.039)
Totally.
Dan Eddie (33:16.759)
You can, you can have it.
Dave Hoekstra (33:25.089)
that you guys use a little bit. Has the collaborative workforce management played any role in kind of this transformation for you guys?
Dan Eddie (33:25.539)
Yeah.
Dan Eddie (33:33.123)
Yeah, for sure. Right. I mean, when you think about all the things that I've described, expansion of channels, multi-skilling of our human capability, the use of AI to identify, verify, call summaries, et cetera, et cetera. You've got to have an engine room that's able to capture all of that information and make sure that all channels are catered for from a resource profile perspective. You've got the right people in the right place at the right time to answer questions with the right capabilities.
Um, and you know, that what, what, what are kind of intraday modeling of the resource profiling of our multi-skilled human capability alongside AI. It's just, it is like Joseph's technical and dream code David, you know, it's a raft of colors that describe what people are doing at various hours during the day to serve the demand of our claims, of course, because we're processing and paying claims. Voice calls coming through 20 % post AI, 50 odd percent chat.
Dave Hoekstra (34:16.226)
Yes.
Dan Eddie (34:29.903)
Right. And we've got, I'm going to add WhatsApp and in-app messaging to that portfolio. Right. So, you know, we need an engine room that understands all of those details and then can position people where the demand of our patients and customers sit through any of those channels using the expertise that's been evolved over, over time. So Calabrio AKA TeleopT as was right, is really, really key to us. I've used TeleopT, Calabrio in my...
Dave Hoekstra (34:52.738)
Yes.
Dan Eddie (34:58.415)
past two roles now, so it's that kind of eight years of usage for one platform. And I, you know, I love it. It just does what it says. It's so reliable and you're able to intuitively develop the tool to go where you want to go through Omni-channel, through the use of AI. And hopefully you can stay with us as we continue to develop the ecosystem that's serving our customers brilliantly well.
Dave Hoekstra (35:23.97)
Yeah.
That's amazing. I mean, I'm a WFM guy my entire career. So I'd love a good, I love a good story, especially when you, follows you through. So I've learned so much, Dan, this is especially the AI agent and process. I think that is, there's an enormous for every one customer, like Simply Health, who has started this journey. There are 500 customers that haven't.
dipped their toe in the waters of this AI CX experience that's out there. And so this knowledge that you've passed along is going to be enormously helpful for a lot of them. And I really appreciate you spending some time with us. So as we get close to wrapping up, I always do a couple of things with our guests. And I was wondering, I'd like to give you the call center lifer quiz. Are you game for that? All right. So the first question of the call center lifer is really easy. Have you ever worn the headset?
Dan Eddie (36:04.472)
not at all.
Dan Eddie (36:14.841)
Sure. Yeah, cool.
Dan Eddie (36:21.911)
Absolutely. Yeah, I started on the phones with a company that I'm sure you'll recognise first direct, the bank in Leeds. I was there for eight years and four of that was with the headset on. So I absolutely have lived the life of a call centre agent and you know, still in the industry today, you are 30 odd years later, right?
Dave Hoekstra (36:29.845)
Mm-hmm.
Dave Hoekstra (36:36.556)
Okay.
Dave Hoekstra (36:43.348)
Yeah, I was going to say we won't say the year, but you beat me to it. So that's that's great. OK, question number two. What is your favorite KPI?
Dan Eddie (36:54.639)
Oh wow, you know I think we've touched on it haven't we? I think speed's happiness right and let me give a bit of a rationale not only because it's kind of new and you know it's fun it is that but it represents I think the centre point of the value chain in what you're trying to do is your people. If you can be as honest and as transparent
Dave Hoekstra (37:06.709)
It's fun.
Dan Eddie (37:20.107)
about the journey that you're going on and they can understand the reason why you're doing it and then you help them through that journey. I think there's advocacy there that is central to you achieving any transformational programme and I think I can back that up as I said by the employee engagement results that we're getting from our people telling us that we're doing a good job. We're not perfect, don't profess to be. There's more to do, more listening.
to do with our people and more talking and getting them involved in the decision making process of how we make our experiences and access to healthcare better, for sure there is. But that's my, absolutely my new favourite metric and will continue to be the case.
Dave Hoekstra (38:00.929)
think my answer might be the same. Great. Okay, question. Next question is, where was the moment in your career that you said, actually kind of like this contact center stuff. Did you have that moment?
Dan Eddie (38:16.621)
Yeah, I don't think I've ever lost it. I mean, I suppose I was lucky with my induction into First Direct. I mean, that still is today a brilliant service, people led organization, whose philosophy was that we're here to serve customers as best as we possibly can. And the kind of eight week training that I went on back then was just first class.
including an incubation period before you went alive. But the thing that stuck out for me was they recruited for attitude, right? They didn't really care where you came from, what background you got. If your attitude was, I want to serve customers and I will serve them really well and I've got the kind of skills and qualities, I can teach, coach, educate you the rest, right? And that for me, was kind of light bulb as I went into it and I've kept that all the way through.
Dave Hoekstra (38:59.786)
Yes, exactly.
Dan Eddie (39:07.779)
So it's probably as early as that, Dave. When I look at the best piece of work I've done because of everything I've learned, it's right here, right now, right at Simply Health. As a result of all the things that have worked, haven't worked, all the ups and downs of my own career, working with some brilliant people, and some not so brilliant people as well, right? Then the best piece of work is what we're currently doing at Simply Health. We have a fantastic team of people.
Dave Hoekstra (39:30.177)
Well.
Dan Eddie (39:36.899)
doing a great job.
Dave Hoekstra (39:38.336)
That leads very well into the next question. Has there been a moment in your career that you wish you could take back or where you made a mistake that other people could learn from?
Dan Eddie (39:48.973)
Yeah, I think when I was in the energy industry, you know, think I wish I'd bought resource planning in earlier when I arrived at the organization. It didn't have a resource planning function. Perhaps I was a bit slow to know I wasn't when I reflect back on it. I was too slow to get there. Should have been the first thing I did. And I waited six months and by then the problem had got worse, not better.
Dave Hoekstra (40:12.875)
Right.
Dan Eddie (40:13.135)
And it was then a mountain, you just had to push water uphill, it was incredibly difficult. I mean, we ended up doing a reasonable job, right? But, you know, it was a very tough time. But good lessons learned as a leader from my own perspective. And, you know, I take that with me and the relationships that my resource planning team, my workforce planning team have today with their operational colleagues is just brilliant.
Dave Hoekstra (40:27.435)
Yep.
Dan Eddie (40:40.761)
They're a part of the same team. In previous organizations, it's been a bit them and us and who's responsible for this and who's responsible for that. Well, there is none of that. It's we're all in one team. We all want to do the same job. We all want the same results. So how do we work that? How do we collaborate? How do we talk to each other? How do we work intraday to give the best experiences to our customers? It's just brilliant. When you get that right, it's so effective.
Dave Hoekstra (41:08.486)
Leads very well into the final question of the call center life for quiz. Is there anybody that in your career that has had a big impact on you that you maybe want to give a shout out to?
Dan Eddie (41:19.665)
that's a great question. There's a couple of people, I think Pauline Hesketh back in the first direct days was a great leader and mentor for me. think she found a sweet spot for me, me to really find what I was really good at as I became a coach, coming off the phones and becoming a coach.
influencing stakeholders and such to think about and move and cross-sell and upsell and all those kind of things. I reflect back on that as being a pivotal moment in my own career and someone who helped me to get there. And then I think, know, just recently he's not with Simply Health anymore, but when I first arrived at Simply Health, I a brilliant CTO called Dave Exel.
And the advent of what I've just described to you, Dave, was off the back of that relationship with Dave. So operationally and technology-wise, we were like, yeah, we want to do this thing. We want to do this together. With the end view being the deliver on our purpose, customers get great results, business gets great results, and our employees feel really great about the journey we're on. And that partnership, I've never worked with a CTO that was so on point for the customer and business and employee.
Dave Hoekstra (42:18.049)
Yes.
Dan Eddie (42:39.631)
wasn't, you know, tech first, was, you know, transformation first, people first, customer first. And for me, again, a really great learning experience, but a really great partnership. you know, wherever, whatever I, if I stay at Simply Health, if I move on, whatever, that relationship is the best I've ever had in terms of being able to transform.
Dave Hoekstra (42:45.995)
Right.
Dan Eddie (43:07.703)
And so I won't settle for anything less than having something similar to that, right, as I move on either here at Simply Health or indeed at any other organisation, because when you get it right and those partnerships are aligned, they can truly bring some fantastic results.
Dave Hoekstra (43:27.084)
There's a lesson in there for some CTOs as well and how you partner with your operations team. Yep, absolutely. Okay, that was the Call Center Life for Quiz. You did fantastic. Great job. And so we're almost at the end here and I always like to give our guests kind of a final thought, anything that you'd like to say to the listeners as just a piece of advice or anything to follow up on anything from previous.
Dan Eddie (43:31.04)
in the just.
Dan Eddie (43:38.191)
Thank you.
Dan Eddie (43:52.239)
So look, you know, we are in the evolution, I don't want to call it a revolution, it's an evolution of using AI in the contact center industry, And I think as operational leaders, those partnerships with other leaders in your organization are really critical to you being able to transform the landscape in which you work. But of course, all of that transformation depends on
on why you want to do it in the first place and be really clear on it. And the clarity of being of why you're using AI or why you want to automate any part of your business needs to be really clear so that therefore you can be transparent with your people. When you think about in those terms and you get agreement and alignment around that, it's then how do you create a plan? How long is that plan? What is the end goal of that plan?
Dave Hoekstra (44:22.049)
There you go.
Dan Eddie (44:45.719)
OK, and for us, it's a five year service vision that we're now in year five or five. And we're very clear about what that channel shift, what that use of AI in channel looks like and what productivity gains we get from it, which means the business can understand the benefit it's getting. The experiences our customers are getting have never been better. We can validate that through highest CSAT we've ever had. We finished 31st in the global KPMG CX report.
that's just come out. were 45th last year, we're 31st this year, we're to be top 10 in a few years time, right? And again, from a small organization like Simply Earth, it's just fantastic. And then the final lens, of course, is your employee lens, how your people feel about being taken through and managed through change that's happening all around them. It's the one consistent factor is change when you're transforming and using AI and automation in your landscape. So it's a bit of a rant there, but it's...
I suppose the summary of thinking about how, why you might use AI and automation and the kind of vision you can create and the success factors that you should look through when you're trying to measure that success.
Dave Hoekstra (45:55.756)
That's way more important than what you use. What you use is going to serve the purpose. So that's fantastic. Well, Dan, it has been an absolute pleasure. Thank you so much for joining us on Working Smarter. It's great having you be a part of the Calabrio team here and really understanding the things that we can help teach others. It means a lot to me. So thank you so much.
Dan Eddie (46:00.313)
Totally. Gifted as.
Dan Eddie (46:08.015)
It's a pleasure.
Dave Hoekstra (46:19.82)
And for those of you that are out there that are listening, appreciate your time. Thanks for spending a little bit of time with us. If you have any questions, you know how to get a hold of me. It's not that hard to figure out. So please send me questions, send me ideas. If you want to join us on the podcast, whatever the case may be, we're here for you. So thanks again, Dan. Appreciate the time. And thank you, everybody. We'll see you on the next episode of Working Smarter from Calabrio.
Dan Eddie (46:37.763)
Thank you, thank you, cheers.