Call Centers in the Time of COVID…and Beyond

Operating a call center that fields nearly half a million phone calls each year typically requires innovative strategies to support employee recruitment, retention and satisfaction; IT infrastructure; and metric measurement. Then, COVID-19 hit. Erie Family Health Centers was forced to quickly and dramatically transform its entire model of care – and Patient Access Operations along with it. More than 70 employees were transitioned to work from home within the span of two weeks. Training programs were revamped to ensure teams were ready to support rapidly evolving models of care, including the rapid launch of telehealth visits and 7-day-a-week care. This session will discuss the sustainability of potential advantages of many of the adaptations that Erie, and other community health centers, made to the way our Patient Access Centers operate. We will focus on the potential benefits for employee recruitment that a work-from-home model may offer. We’ll look at the important metrics that are necessary to measure to sustain the health of your call center during a time of crisis and beyond. And we will explore the adjustments to employee training that allow organizations to be more agile, more responsive to change, and more empathetic to employees' needs and wants.