Auckland District Health Board Selects VeCommerce

Auckland District Health Board (ADHB) has signed a contract with VeCommerce Limited to provide a voice self-service solution with the goal of automating 45 percent of general calls currently answered within their contact center.

The new system is based on VeDialler, part of VeCommerce's VeConnect® series of application modules, which has already been delivered to the Ministry of Social Development and NSW Police Assistance Line in Australia.

Callers say the name of the person, department or hospital ward they need to talk to and VeDialler will transfer the call to the extension without the assistance of an operator.

Auckland District Health Board currently operates a 24-hour contact center based at the Greenlane Clinical Center in Auckland. This is staffed by 35 Customer Service Representatives (CSRs), operating on a rotating shift basis throughout the day. The contact center receives approximately 1.9 million general calls per annum with approximately 60 percent of those calls originating internally due to the mobile nature of clinical staff within a hospital.

In a business-driven effort to meet varying demand on its call center agents, ADHB looked to automate the calls it receives by deploying this virtual receptionist.

Melanie Blank, customer support manger, information services at ADHB said, "With unpredictable peaks and troughs with incoming calls, deciding on correct staffing levels was becoming increasingly difficult. We needed to ensure we had optimum staffing levels at all times as, time is of the essence in the medical profession and we could not afford to have our staff kept on hold for too long."

"At the same time, we sought a solution that could provide service efficiencies by freeing up our staff to focus on patient confirmation/rescheduling calls, while also enabling us to significantly reduce the operating costs and the capital investment required to take calls."

Built within a VoiceXML framework, VeDialler supports text-to-speech (TTS) technology where the stored name can be spoken by a synthesized voice. It is customizable and has its own 'browser-based' administration tool allowing entries to be added, updated, and configured. Using any standard Web browser, information on new or existing employees such as new numbers, nicknames or unusual pronunciations can be added.