Company: Optum Eden Prairie, MN
Company Description: Optum is a health services and innovation company whose mission is to help people live healthier lives and to help make the health system better for everyone. At Optum, we design every experience by leveraging the voice of our customers and implement channel solutions which enhance and streamline the customer experience.
Nomination Category: Customer Service & Call Center Awards Achievement Categories
Nomination Sub Category: Best Return on Customer Service Investment
 Nomination Title: Investing in the Customer Experience
- Outline the nominated achievement since July 1 2020 that you wish to bring to the judges' attention (up to 250 words):
Total 242 words used.
In the past two years, 11 million additional customers have been recognized and helped quicker because of Optum’s success in improving recognition. The $195,000 investment has produced a $23.9 million dollar annualized hard benefit savings.
Since mid-2020, Optum has invested time and resources to improve customer experiences in the IVR. The strategy involved deepening our understanding of the customer journey by completing call listening, developing outside in metrics, analyzing data, expanding the NL footprint, and adjusting NL capability technical settings. Leveraging this approach has allowed Optum to better listen and act on consumer needs on an ongoing basis.
Additional details on steps taken:
- Created customer centric metrics, built reports, and developed insights
- Leveraged new metrics to identify and prioritize areas of opportunity.
- Established a key performance indicator (KPI) of 80% Recognized Rate for the enterprise. The team worked with internal and external partners to define KPI target based industry standards. Baseline AVG Recognized Rate was 78%. Performing 2% below the target KPI was concerning and drove the team into action.
- Established and deployed enterprise standards for NL
- Developed standard technical settings to address for the differences in how NL was technically configured enterprise wide.
- Standard settings were rolled out in a cascaded manner to each line of business as success was demonstrated.
- Consistent monitoring to maintain optimal performance
- The efforts produced an 18% increase in recognition rate with significant downstream gains in other key metrics such as NPS and transfers.
- Which will you submit for your nomination in this category, a video of up to five (5) minutes, explaining the nominated achievement since July 1, 2020, OR written answers to the questions? (Choose one):
Written answers to the questions
- If you are submitting a video of up to five (5) minutes in length, provide the URL of the video here, OR attach it to your entry via the "Add Attachments, Videos, or Links to This Entry" link above, through which you may also upload a copy of your video. If you are submitting written answers to the questions for this category, provide them in the spaces below.
- Reference any attachments of supporting materials throughout this nomination and how they provide evidence of the claims you have made in this nomination (up to 250 words):
Total 228 words used.
Please see attached power point deck. Highlights of specific slides below.
- Slide Two: Investing in the customer experience. High level summary of the investment, objective, strategy, completed actions, and customer impact.
- Slide Three: Driving value. Provides detail on results including key metrics and annualized hard benefits. This effort yielded significant improvements with four key metrics resulting in a 23.9-million-dollar savings per year.
- Slide Four: Consumer journey- before and after. Demonstrates impact of this work on the consumer journey by walking through before and after IVR journeys.
- Slide Six: Project Timeline. Reflection of the project timeline from mid-2020 through October 2022. Details milestones, progress, and demonstrates the positive changes which were implemented have been maintained throughout 2022.
- Slide Seven: Provides actual examples of customer feedback from the Optum NPS IVR Event Triggered survey. Demonstrates customers are regularly sharing positive comments about their IVR experience.
- Slide Eight: Displaying 2021 (full calendar year) data from a report created as part of this effort. Report compares three types of journeys and correlates high performing NL to higher Nexidia sentiment scores.
- Slide Nine: Enterprise view of changes to key metrics with corresponding savings calculations.
- Slide Ten: Alternate view of slide 8 which provides pre, post metrics as well as monthly savings and spend.
- Slide Eleven: Return on Investment by line of business. Provides data by line of business for key metric impacts.
- Briefly describe the nominated organization: its history and past performance (up to 200 words):
Total 197 words used.
Optum is a health services and innovation company whose mission is to help people live healthier lives and to help make the health system better for everyone. We design every experience by leveraging the voice of our customers and implement solutions which enhance and streamline the customer experience. This model drives our interactions through a consumer centric lens to deliver simple, smart, and seamless experiences for the customers we serve. Within Optum, the Omni-Channel Customer Experience and Capabilities team is responsible for creating and maturing standard designs for usage in the automated phone system (IVR) driving value for the consumer.
Natural Language (NL) is the capability being highlighted in this submission; NL provides speech recognition in the automated phone system. Customers enjoy this functionality because it allows callers to speak freely in their own words; efficiently and effectively routing to required destination. The team embarked on a comprehensive examination of current processes, identified gaps, implemented technology and process-based solutions to close gaps and then documented soft and hard dollar impacts of the work. Key internal and external partners were engaged including throughout this effort including - Optum Information Technology, Enterprise Analytics, Product Owners, Experience Leads and Nuance.
- Explain why the achievement you have highlighted is unique or significant. If possible compare the achievement to the performance of other players in your industry and/or to the organization's past performance (up to 250 words):
Total 214 words used.
Previously, 22% of the customers who went through NL heard, "I'm sorry. I didn't understand that.". Now, customers are successfully recognized 96% of the time. This investment prevents customers from having to repeat themselves or endure multiple transfers across the organization searching for someone who can answer their question.
The enhanced experience in place today is easier to navigate because customers speak freely and are understood more frequently in the IVR instead of having to repeat themselves or listen to long winded business centered menus. Before, the customer experience was complex, inconsistent, and frustrating. After, the revised customer experience is simplified, seamless and more consistent.
Noteworthy, downstream effects correlated to successful customer speech recognition are demonstrated by performance data for four key metrics:
Recognized rate: +18.25
NPS: +6.15
Agent to agent transfer rates: -1.8%
IVR resolved rates: +3.1
Optum invested $195,000 in this effort with a return on investment of $23.9M annually. NPS increased demonstrate positive customer feedback trends. Specifically, NPS focused on for this data point involves only NPS surveys which are event triggered surveys following an IVR interaction. Optum’s efforts improved how well we are listening to customers in the automated phone system has resulted in millions of customers experiencing simplified and more conversational interactions.
| Attachments/Videos/Links: |
|---|
|
