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.
WEM in Healthcare Organizations with Daniel Acosta
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Dave Hoekstra: [00:00:00] Welcome to Working Smarter, presented by Calabrio where we 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. We're glad you're joining us to learn and grow together in order to provide world class customer service to each and every one of our clients.
My name is Dave Hoekstra, a product evangelist for Calabrio, and my guest today is, Daniel Acosta. Now, Daniel and I have known each other for a, a hot minute or so, and the really interesting piece that we're looking to go with today is really discussing workforce engagement management, or W F o, workforce optimization, whatever you wanna call it these days.
In the healthcare space and the healthcare space is such a unique beast because there are so many different aspects right now. In some ways, they're just like every other contact center, right? They, they take [00:01:00] calls, they take emails, they take chats. But where the healthcare industry really separates itself is the amount of other information that usually has to be dealt with in a day-to-day basis, right?
And that's really what we want, kind of wanna focus on today. So, Daniel, first of all, welcome really glad you're here joining me and thank you. The other, the other thing, yeah, the other thing that I want to do is, you know, tell us a little bit about yourself. So tell us a little bit about your experience in the healthcare industry.
And, you know, to be honest, I'm asking you because we gotta let the audience know why we should be listening to you. So give us a little bit of your background and kind of what you did for the healthcare industry, and then we'll get into some of
Daniel Acosta: the deeper topics. Yeah. Thank you so much for having me, Dave.
So I've been in the healthcare space for now, close to 13, 14 years. I've been a little longer than on the call center space as a whole. But yeah, this past 13 years has been heavy into the different areas of [00:02:00] healthcare. So Getting a lot of knowledge on the different work workings of it, right?
So as an agent, and then from there, moving up to supervisor and working from a couple of different areas on the management side and, and workforce management, quality management even it also maintaining, you know, certain applications for contact centers. So it's It's been a great journey so far.
Dave Hoekstra: So, so pretty much everything except for actually performing the surgery, correct? Exactly. Yeah. Yeah. That's, that. That's great. And so you know, your experience, you know, you spent some time doing it and most of that has been kind of in the context in our space, but I also imagine that a lot of that.
When you work in the healthcare space, you spend a lot of time dealing with kind of other departments and other areas. So it's not, we're not specifically talking about contact center, we are talking about billing and claims and insurance and those kind of spaces. Did you spend a lot of time working with those other departments as well?
Daniel Acosta: Yeah, so that, that's the cool part about the, the healthcare [00:03:00] side of things, cuz sometimes we, we, when you look at contact center in the healthcare space, a lot of the times we think about. Scheduling, right. And, but then again, when you start actually dealing with all of the other different verticals within it, you know, we are talking about marketing, we're talking about even something as simple as the help desk and then billing, like you mentioned, you know, we have a central billing office to where, you know, there might not be a call center, but they handle it out of calls.
So this is a d very, very various different of departments that you get to. To experience and, and learn from.
Dave Hoekstra: Now one of the things I always like to ask, how, how did you get into this space? How what, what, what was the, what was the beginning? I, there's a very common thread a lot of times in this, and we'll see if you say the same thing that I expect to hear.
But how did you get into kind of the healthcare context center space? How did that happen? So, I
Daniel Acosta: have a background on architecture and electricity. [00:04:00] I'm, I'm an electrician, but trade, right? So back in 2000 and. Eight. I came out of the military and there was no work anywhere. And I ended up in a contact center and then a friend of mine reached out and is like, Hey, you know, we're looking for some people on, on this specific contact center.
They were looking for like overnight work. And I was like, oh yeah, if I find somebody, I'll let you know. And then I was like, wait, I, I, I do wanna work on, on that environment. So then I started working on there. Then from there from that department I got referred to a different department on on, on admissions.
Contact center for for a healthcare organization. And then from then it was just, I fell in love with it. Yeah.
Dave Hoekstra: It so it, it's very common, very common answer. It, I mean, I, I, I do find that nobody, nobody sat down in the first grade when they asked you, what do you wanna be when you grow up and, right.
Nobody says, I wanna be a call center agent. Right. It's, yeah. It, it, it very rarely happens that way. My story is very similar. [00:05:00] And, and so now as you. So you kind of, let's, let's progress through your career a little bit. You kind of started as the overnight agent and, you know, was it, did you kind of move to, is it the team lead position or did you go into the QA position?
How, what was your kind of progression through that?
Daniel Acosta: So from, from being the, an agent, then from there I jumped right into supervisor role. And just learning everything, you know, managing the, the, the call centers with, you know, on the, on the weekends, that's kind of starting on the managing side, you know, doing the schedules and that's that, that's, that's, that's when you start appreciating some of the things that you do now versus what you did before to where you spend, you know, like two weeks working on a schedule for.
You know, for the next month, you know, trying to arrange all this stuff. So that was very intricate, you know, doing the forecasting by hand and, and that, that was fun. And then from then moving on through [00:06:00] an actual workforce management department where now we, we now we are starting to use technology a little bit more.
And then scheduling agents doing the forecast, you know, more on that automated process. And and then from there really tapping into other areas, right? So, none sqm, you know, working on the quality management side of things. A lot of automated workflows that we, that we work with. And and then from there and started touching a little bit more into the IT side of things so it kind of rounded more of the scope.
So then I was able to not only talk the IT portion of things, but then I was able to, to keep the operations hat and then be the hybrid. So it's been.
Dave Hoekstra: So let's go, let's grow through the process here. Did at any, at this point, did you ever have to deal with doing things kind of manually? Right. Excel spreadsheets?
You know, literal, I mean, I always joke back when I first started [00:07:00] working in contact centers the QM process was literally done with handheld tape recorders. We don't have to deal with that anymore, but did. Kind of walk me through the progression of the technology, because, you know, we are focusing here on the, on the W E M W F O side and how it, how it can help.
But let's start, where was your pain? Right. Tell me about how that pain early was.
Daniel Acosta: So, my first, my first intro with that was, Having to do this side by side. So you have like this wide connector to where you plug into the user, you have to sit there for a few calls and kind of, you know, now you have like, like a little printout and then you're doing, you know, checking boxes.
It's like, okay, yes, they did the greeting, no, they didn't do this. And then you sit there and try to, you know, calculate all this stuff, right? So once we actually. Got into, you know, using a W F O product, a W Em product. Now just call recordings. Were just sitting there and then we were just going through the process, right?
So now the system is [00:08:00] pre-selecting the calls and then o you just, you don't have to spend time sitting with them, you know, cuz now you, you can actually listen to a call and for one agent then move on to the next call to a different agent and be able to spend. More time, you know, I guess more efficiently.
Mm-hmm. And then, and the fact that, you know, with with when we started using as a matter of fact, we started using collabreo. We started with with the automated Just pre-selection of calls and then just being able to evaluate right out of the box that, that, that was, that for me. That was, I think the, the, the, the good highlight for it cuz you know, going from that little piece of paper and the binder and stuff like that and now you're able to, you're able to just gonna do the evaluation and the agent gets a copy.
I have a copy I can report on it. It was, it was good man. It was a, it is a big, it was a big change. Love hearing the
Dave Hoekstra: word binder. That, that, that usually gives you an indication of how manual. So, so curious, let give me a kind of before and [00:09:00] after. When. Before, before kind of having a tool, how many evaluations were you getting done?
And then what's the after look like? So,
Daniel Acosta: On an average day, I was able to do, let's say, you know, maybe four evaluations, five evaluations, just because, you know, while you walk around and plug in and find the right call to evaluate. From there, we went to actually easily evaluating 20 calls per, you know, on a day.
Just that was like a, like a low, like a low number. So it's so
Dave Hoekstra: four to four to five times more evaluations. And so what kind of impact did that have on the quality?
Daniel Acosta: It was actually a lot better cuz now because all the information was stored in the system, you know, with the, with the actual recording and then you're able to report on that.
Mm-hmm. So we were able to actually identify specific trends cuz of, let's say for example agents that were not able to pass, you know, like an 80% at quality score. We were able to [00:10:00] kind of drill down and be like, okay, so they have an issue with just the closing. So we were able to hone in into actual skills that they needed to, to be addressed and not Now trying to, you know, redo like a whole training for an agent or something who was just able to, to, to do that, right?
Because you know, you no longer trying to go through the different sheets and you know, be well to like, okay, oh, this, this mark and this other mark and, you know, it was just a, a lot easier. We became a lot more flexible and, and, and I would say, what's the right word for that? Flexible and just Efficient.
Efficient,
Dave Hoekstra: yes. Yeah, there you go. Yeah. And, and well, so that kind of happens any context in it, right? Mm-hmm. So what I kind of want to drill down to is, let's talk about healthcare specifically. Like when you could evaluate more calls were there specific advantages being kind of the healthcare space that, that maybe other contact centers don't necessarily have to worry about?
Daniel Acosta: Right. So, [00:11:00] One of the organizations that I work for after every interaction with a patient, they send a survey out, right? Mm-hmm. So, and the, and the return is about like an 18% of those surveys, and that's how they normally make decisions in regards to how they care for their patients. So,
Dave Hoekstra: Making decisions on less than 20% return rate.
Okay. Going, I'm not gonna say anything more.
Daniel Acosta: So, and, but then when you really think about it, Those interactions are not, are not the bulk of the interactions that you have with a healthcare organization. You know, do you have, you know, the, when I call in to make an appointment, when I call in to reschedule an appointment, when I call in, to check on, on re on results, when I call in to, to get a referral for something else.
So do you have at least, you know, 80% or even 80% of the experience is done on the phone and maybe just like a 20% on. In person. Right? But then you're making bigger decisions on just that 80%. But, but then if [00:12:00] you from the sampling that they were, they were actually looking at, at the beginning was they were bar barely heating 0.18% of their call volume was being actually looked at.
Right? Because they You know, again, manual process, all this sort of stuff. So now by implementing now like, like a tool, like, you know, like a WM tool to where you can actually go through the recordings, evaluate, you know, you went from 0.1 A to 3% of those calls, but you know that 3% could be millions of calls compared to.
To what you were doing before, right? To, you know, from from a million contacts you were evaluating 200, right? And then from there you went up to like 27,000 contacts. So then it is just a, it was a big difference and able to make even big, big bigger changes. Cause now the, the, the customer experience, the patient experience is not just in person.
Cuz in person, that's the other thing in person, you set the bar. You [00:13:00] know, very high. Cuz you know, this organization was very, you know, well, very well in the bedside manners, very well in you know, the experience as a whole when you walk into a clinic or you go into the hospital, excellent, right? But then you needed to match or exceed that on the phone.
Right. So that's, that's, that, that was the target. So one, we, once we were able to evaluate more calls, we were able to actually provide better feedback to the agents. It, it, it, it showed, cuz then, you know, the, the menus were better. Every, the whole experience got a lot better.
Dave Hoekstra: That's, that's great. And I wanna be clear, I want to, I wanna point this out for everybody that, that's less listening when.
Daniel says 0.18%. That's not 0.18. That translates to 18%. That's 0.18%. That is less than 1% than two-tenths of a percent. Yeah. That, that are, that are, that are coming back. And, and where I want to go with this, Daniel, what kind of decisions were being made, because that's not just small sample size, that's like infant ismal, sample size, but what kind of decisions were being made off of that [00:14:00] feedback?
Daniel Acosta: So imagine having to go through several layers of, you know, a phone tree, right? To where, you know, do you, do you have, you know, 15 physicians on the same menu and you're trying to get through that. By the time you got to letter Z, you already forgot, you know, did I already hear the doctor? Right? So mm-hmm.
That was, you know, some of the stuff, you know, when, you know introducing analytics as well at that point to where, you know, looking at issues, listening to the call and the feedback that the customers are providing. You know, it's like I keep calling and, you know, I keep getting the wrong information and I keep pressing this number and this is happening.
So we were able to Simplified the menus to where more customer friendly and not just because we wanted to redirect a bunch of calls I didn't wanna handle with it was just making sure that they got to the right place a lot quicker. So we, we went from like six, seven layers to only three maximum.
Right within a menu. And it was because of that [00:15:00] feedback. You know, the agents were kind of struggling on the calls we were listening to, to those interactions, looking at the transcripts, you know, looking at the analytics dashboards and being like, okay, so we have all these issues. So we were able to make some stuff like that, some, some really good decisions.
And on the customer experience side,
Dave Hoekstra: Good. And so, you know, we talked about kind of the, the, the manual pain at the beginning and now you, you've kind of progressed. What was that transition process like for kind of the, not, not just specifically the contact center, but the overall organization? What, what kind of things came out?
What, what takeaways came out of that process that that led to some success for you guys?
Daniel Acosta: So the first thing that was very highlighted was the fact that The interactions were not what we were assuming they were. Okay, so what,
Dave Hoekstra: what do, what do you mean by that?
Daniel Acosta: So again, a lot of decisions were being made by the service that they were sent from the in-person interactions, but then [00:16:00] we were not really listening to the other interactions that were sometimes even more meaningful.
Cuz I'm struggling, I'm calling, I'm in pain and I wanna schedule an appointment. So, making. Making those those interactions more meaningful for the patients. It actually helped the overall scores when those, those sort of things were received. Cause now you, you went to the hospital, then they sent you home, they sent you that survey, but then you tend to remember those other interactions that were minimal as well.
They kind of influenced how you felt on the overall experience. Cuz, you know, when I called that agent would really help me, gave me all the information that I needed before I went to the, with the doctor's office. My time was more valuable as a patient. Mm-hmm. Right? So I, I feel more valued as a patient.
Right. So I'm, I'm, I know if I have two hospitals within the five mile radius of my house, I know I'm gonna choose that one. Because it was not just about the [00:17:00] in-person experience, it was about the overall experience When I called, when I followed up, when they called me, you know, do you make it home?
Okay. Right. So all of those interactions that we being captured enhance the overall experience. So that was a rather of the out of the get-go, that was one of those things. Actually in just to, not to go so far from when we had the, the pandemic. A lot of the people, you know, were kind of going through, through the process, you know, at, at that point, you know, a lot of us didn't know what to do, right?
So, you know, I'm, I'm coughing, you know, Ooh, do I, do I, do I go and do I need to get tested? You know, do I do this? Do I do that? So we started to receive a lot of calls to patients that were trying to find that information, and then imagine sitting on queue. For, you know, 10 minutes, 15 minutes trying to figure out, they was like, oh yeah, you don't need to get tested.
You know, it's, it's, it tends to be frustrating. So through, through analytics what we ended up doing just created dashboards around that to where we evalu, you know, we looked at, [00:18:00] we tracked those phrases, you know, it's like I have this symptom, I have this other symptom. Should I get tested? Where do I get tested?
And what we ended up doing is across our, our menus we ended up adding one, you know, press star. You know, for covered information. And then right there we dumped all that information. Hey, if you have this symptom and that symptom and this other symptom, we recommend, you should get tested. Contact your physician.
If you need information about testing locations, press one. And we'll send you a, an SMS link to our website to find the near location to you, right? So at that point, you know, instead of waiting five, 10 minutes on queue, now you had all your information within a minute.
Dave Hoekstra: And so, okay, so now you've, okay.
You've bridged a really great gap here because mm-hmm. I know one of the unique challenges, eh, let's, let's call it for all organizations, but probably it's, it, it probably has a more of a weight when we talk about healthcare is getting information. From different areas, right? Like you, you, you, you certainly had this, this report [00:19:00] and these dashboards that showed what was happening on the calls, but were you able to kind of connect that data to other parts of the organization and, and use it in ways that got outside the contact center?
Daniel Acosta: Yeah. So marketing was one of those things that that benefit a lot from, from, from that data, right? So Getting influx of calls from a specific clinic that had just opened, you know, maybe some people didn't know about some of their services. So then we were able to share that information with those departments to where they were able to kind of tweak their campaigns a little bit more, to provide a little bit better information, right?
Mm-hmm. The fact that our referral management department, also, the process changed a bit, you know, because of information that we provided. In the fact that hey, you know, they're calling in, they called the referral department. They got a choice for three physicians. They could, you know go to.
But then that information, you know, a lot of the times when they were reaching the [00:20:00] clinics, you know, the information that they, they were not getting enough information to that specific clinic where they were located, all that. So they, they were able to tweak the process. To, to kind of narrow down the service area for those patients.
Mm-hmm. So they were able to kind of like, Hey, you know, yes your home address is this, but they were looking at now the, the work address, cuz maybe, you know, it's easier for, for you to just go to under your lunch break to go to the doctor right next, you know, by your work office. Rather than wait until they get home or miss time from work, you know, and yes, they're getting to the doctor's office, right, because okay.
So they're able to streamline those processes just based on the information that we put from analytics and share with them.
Dave Hoekstra: So I'll, I'll use marketing as an example here, but if there's a better one, how did they feel about this information? Because historically, in my experience, marketing barely even knows that contact centers exist.
Right? They, they, mm-hmm. They, they're out there. How, how did they, how did they use this information? What, what was their feedback when they started being able to get this [00:21:00] info?
Daniel Acosta: So the, actually they expanded their, the usage to their departments as well. Right? So cuz now knowing that it was a single point of like a single data source that was being, it was usable from all single departments cuz there is not siloed anymore, right?
So they, you have 160 different call centers that were, you know, all of them using the same, you know, the same tool. So now the data is available to everybody, right? So you just needed to. Kind of maybe talk to this manager. We, you know, talk amongst managers. He's like, Hey, you know, we are trying to, to deploy this campaign on this specific region.
Do you have to pay people to, you know, cause that's gonna create an influx of calls. They were about to open in a, a clinic. So now that became a little more on the operation side, you know, so they were discussing, okay, so we are gonna bring in, you know, maybe a thousand patients more for that specific area, meaning that many calls are gonna be an influence for that specific contact center to handle the, the scheduling.[00:22:00]
And all the things related to that clinic, right? So then they were able to kind of work now in conjunction be like, Hey, so now we have the data, we have the forecast, we have all these things that we can utilize, you know, across the departments. It was not no longer siloed, you know, it's like marketing knows this and their concern knows this, and they're not talking to each other now because it was a single data source, it was a lot easier to coordinate those those business decisions and expansions.
Wow. That,
Dave Hoekstra: that's, it's awesome to hear because, you know, We, we talk to organizations all the time that the contact center is like this. Ba basically off on an island, right? Mm-hmm. All by themselves. And it's really great to hear the coordination between, you know, marketing, contact center you know, patient intake, those kind of things that help define really what you can get out of this.
And so just kind of continuing down that path, did this lead to any kind of savings or higher revenue or anything in that, in that, in that [00:23:00] space?
Daniel Acosta: Absolutely because when one of the, the studies that we did was effort versus appointments completed, right? Mm-hmm. So how many times a patient had to call in how many times, you know how many times they had to reschedule because of, you know, the wrong information, they arrived later or something like that.
So by being able to handle. The call's obviously more efficient, be able to put more, you know, book more appointments and, and we're talking about, you know, each appointment has any specific dollar value. So when you increase that for like 25 to 35% on an average, You know, that was, wow, that was huge.
So then, you know, cuz now you have more volume and, and then you technically you're still using kind of the same amount of people that we were using before. Mm-hmm. Right. It's just like now, you know, when you start talking about, you know introducing a workforce management, you're able to kind of match the agents to the actual vol volume that you're [00:24:00] receiving.
You know, so you're maximizing the people that you have. So you're enhancing the experience because now they're not waiting as long, you're being more efficient in the information that you're providing. So by the time, you know, the less cancellations and because you're handling the calls a little bit quicker, now you have more room to handle more patients.
So and, and again, with the same amount of fts that you had at the beginning, right? So It kind of goes full circle.
Dave Hoekstra: Yeah. And it just kinda keeps snowballing, right. You know. Mm-hmm. Shorter calls means more availability. More availability means, you know, fewer callbacks means more availability to book more appointments.
Right. And, you know, few, you know, exactly. Abandoned rates go down. You know, CSAT scores go up. Right. It's that whole you know, it's, it's the goal that we always try to bring to it. So, Mm-hmm. Now let's talk about, a little bit about the, the, the technical side of things, right. What, mm-hmm. When you were going through your day-to-day, you know, did you find that, I mean, obviously we've talked about the increase in the efficiency, you know, going [00:25:00] more calls, better efficiency and things like that.
What about the, you know, the actual processes itself? Did those, did those work the way you wanted to? Did, did you know, was the, was the software what you needed it to be?
Daniel Acosta: Oh, absolutely, man. Like at the beginning I mentioned, you know, it used to take me two weeks to handle, you know, to arrange the schedule for the following month, right?
And now with, with, with with, you know, with the automatization of the software, you have the opportunity to do, run a forecast, run a, a schedule of, you know, 500 agents within a span of five minutes, right? So, Those are some of those things that you really start to appreciate. And then from a quality perspective, you know, you're talking about going from spending, you know, a couple hours here and there with some agents and only able to evaluate a handful of calls.
You know, you're going into evaluating, you know, 20 calls. 30 calls. Yeah. You know, for, [00:26:00] for, and, and, and you get a better sampling so you're able to make better decisions on those things. So it, it, it definitely, it. And again, and, and I think those changes actually made me fall more in love with, with the process.
Right. Because you know, you start talking about, You know how you transition from, you know, the pen and paper to just clicking a few buttons and then, you know, when you start actually now thinking, you know, future improvement, you start moving to the cloud now to where you don't have to worry about downtime.
You don't have to worry about, you know, those you know, you have to update your servers, update everything, and everything is like, okay, new, new feature is done. Boom. You have it available because you're in the cloud. You know, the. The, the processor a lot quicker because you're not depending on, you know, how much power your servers have on prem, you know, is is now.
Yeah. It's now just gonna like, you know, if you wanna run it, you can run it. You're good. Right. So
Dave Hoekstra: the old school, all those analytics servers, and you know, believe me, I had to deal with that many times. And now nowadays we just, we just [00:27:00] throw it all up in the cloud and it, and it works so much better and, you know, quicker, faster, easier, no downtime, all of that.
Great. Stuff that goes along with it. Yep. I'm with you. A hundred percent.
Daniel Acosta: Yeah. No, and, and, and, and me for again, you know, the, the past few years again, being that, that hybrid between IT and, and operations, you know, maintaining the applications, the environment, you know, you really learn to appreciate those things.
You know, no longer, you don't have to, those overnight upgrades, you know, have to worry about, you know, like the server crash or it didn't crash, you know, it's just You're always up to date. You're always just ready to go. And you've mentioned the transcription. The transcription though, was a pain, you know, running the transcription task could take forever.
Mm-hmm. Right? And now it's just, now it's just there. It's actually, yeah. A lot easier. So,
Dave Hoekstra: th this is, this has been great and I think you've given us a really good view of kind of what we have to deal with. But I kind of want to, to kind of round out the conversation here. In your mind, what's the most [00:28:00] unique challenge that healthcare organizations have to deal with versus maybe just kind of your run of the mill customer service contact
Daniel Acosta: center?
I think I wanna say one of those challenges is thinking that the, the, the healthcare call centers that are not only the scheduling thing, right? That tends to put that that barrier of Data silo, you know, the silos of data mm-hmm. Is basically just like, if I'm looking at only the, the contact center space is not only the scheduling, right.
So within the healthcare organization, knowing that you have the opportunity to use something, you know, to maximize your, your, your workforce, you know, calling it like that to maximize the people you have. You know, from all aspects, whether they're a call center or non call center, because that's another thing, you know, sometimes we forget that you know, we have many meaningful [00:29:00] interactions happening at the clinic level that we can get recorded.
Mm-hmm. You know, we can evaluate on those in specific interactions. So sometimes, you know, on the healthcare, we tend to lose sight of those other opportunities when we can get really, really meaningful data and and, and that's what I, I, I wish we would see more. Right. Is the, the, the healthcare is not just scheduling.
We have all of those other contact points that that really provide meaningful data for, for us to make the patient experience a lot better. It's interesting
Dave Hoekstra: to, to look at it from that perspective because, yeah, I mean, you've just literally made me realize right now that pretty much almost. All of my meaningful conversations with a healthcare organization are trying to get something scheduled.
Right. And, and, and. Mm-hmm. And then when I do now, it's, you know, patient portals make that communication a lot easier, but they also take it outside of that typical communication loop. You've got, you know, you've, you've got these meaningful [00:30:00] conversations that are usually happening between like nurse and patient or doctor and patient and not necessarily mm-hmm.
Scheduler. Inpatient because it's accurate scheduled inpatient. It's like, Hey, can the doctor see me? Yes, they can. Here's what, okay, great. Not a ton of meaningful data that shows up in there. Where the meaningful data comes from is that second and third level conversations that maybe happen outside the contact center.
But, but how can we leverage those communications? And I think even there's, there's now methodology to record those in-person conversations too. Right there, there's, there's ways to do that as well. So I think that's a fantastic point. And I, you know, I think that really speaks to your experience in the, in the space is that if we're only looking at scheduling contact center data, we're, we're probably only capturing 20% of the picture.
And there's, there's quite a bit that goes along with that. I think that's great. Yeah. Yeah. Alright. Well, you know, the, I, I have to admit, [00:31:00] this has been, Very enlightening. I, I, I did not spend a lot of my career in the healthcare organization, but I did spend some of it. And so getting that, getting that perspective and kind of seeing what it looks like from that area has really, really kind of opened my eyes a little bit.
And, you know, I've, as a, you know, I'm sure you're the same way as a former contact center. Agent, anytime I call mm-hmm. Into a call center, I'm usually much more empathetic towards the agent than probably a lot of people are. But now it, it's even multiplied more that I would talk to somebody in healthcare.
So I really want to thank you Yeah. For spending some time with us. So typically what I like to do is at the end of each episode, I kind of give you the final word. If you, if you had some wisdom to a spouse to the To the listeners out there, especially kind of in the healthcare space, what might you what might you say?
The, the podium is yours?
Daniel Acosta: I would say expand your limits. I think you know, when [00:32:00] you start thinking a little beyond the contact center it's gonna help a lot open up a lot of opportunities for, for us to get better on the patient service things. Okay. Again, you know, meaningful con, meaningful conversations, meaningful interactions are happening a lot outside of the scheduling departments.
And and there is, it's, it's a mind goal. You know, we, we really We really can make the patient experience a lot, a lot better
Dave Hoekstra: than what we think. Yeah. And I love it that you said mine gold instead of gold mine. It, it that, that, that show, that gives me some great insight into the brain of Daniel Acosta there.
It's like, yes, it is a, it is a mine gold that, that, that we want to tap into. So I want to, I want to thank you for spending some time with us here on Working Smarter. It was great to have you. And I. Always like to make sure to tell our listeners thank you as well that the, that you spend some time with us [00:33:00] and listen huge thank you to Daniel for his insights into how healthcare organizations can really tap into the power of not just W F O W E M, but the power of like expanding your limits of thinking, thinking differently.
Take a minute and ask yourself, what, what's the information we really want to get to? Don't ask what can the technology do? What can our tools do, but what do we need to be successful? And then work backwards from there. And I think this is a great example of how Daniel in his career has done that with with the tools that have been available to you.
So Daniel, huge thank you to you. For the rest of you guys that are out there listening, thank you. Thanks for spending some time with us here on working Smarter and we'll look forward to seeing you on the next episode. Take care and have a great rest of the day.
Daniel Acosta: All right. Take.