CUSTOMER PROFILE
ABOUT
One of Brazil’s largest health care companies in the supplemental health sector, Hapvida Sistema de Saúde provides healthcare and medical services primarily in the north and northeast of the country. The healthcare system serves over 4 million beneficiaries at 32 hospitals and 105 clinics. Hapvida strives to promote and maintain the health of the customers with excellent customer service and cost management.
BUSINESS NEED
- Improve service levels
- Address increased demand for services due to COVID-19
- Implement single WFM solution after period of rapid growth and expansion
- Reduce manual effort and delays associated with forecasting, scheduling, and reporting
- Obtain modern KPIs including real-time adherence
RESULTS ACHIEVED
- Integrated 52 management units into a single WFM solution
- Forecast accuracy up from 74% to 95%
- Service levels rising even amid higher demand
- Days-long delays pared out of WFM processes
- Boosted value and trust in reporting
- Developed successful training programs for workers with no contact center experience
- Model program for COVID-19 benefit and contact tracing programs
THE GOAL
Hapvida Saúde is a vertically-integrated provider of health and dental services, which emphasizes cost-effective comprehensive care through its own network of hospitals, clinics, and imaging centers. From humble beginnings as a single clinic in 1979, Hapvida Saúde has grown rapidly in recent years through expansion into new service lines as well as through acquisition of other providers and networks. The company’s emphasis on efficient, responsible management was further amplified by becoming publicly traded in 2018.
This rapid, heterogeneous growth left Hapvida Saúde with inconsistent planning and staffing processes at its 15 nationwide contact centers. Some metrics, such as real-time adherence, were completely opaque and unavailable.
In some industries, coordinating contact center operations is simply a matter of efficiency and return on investment. Hapvida Saúde prides itself on consistent vertical services delivery that meets most patient needs from its owned-and-operated provider network. But inconsistent practices meant that service levels could not be guaranteed between contact center units, challenging the company’s mission. Hapvida Saúde wanted to improve service levels that connect to patient satisfaction, and doing that meant implementing centralized workforce management practices across the entire 1,700 agent operation.
To achieve these goals, Hapvida Saúde needed real-time adherence for the first time in its 40+ year history. It also wanted to automate forecasting and scheduling, accelerate regulatory compliance reviews, and improve supervisor control over individual schedules. And in order to begin a new year on solid footing, Hapvida Saúde wanted to meet these goals before year-end 2020.
THE SOLUTION
Hapvida Saúde worked with NICE partner Telesul to implement NICE IEX Workforce Management in the fourth quarter of 2020. The two organizations collaborated to ensure minimal disruption to the 24/7 contact center operations which process 12.5 million inquiries every year. Historical data was exported from the disparate legacy contact center systems and imported into the new NICE solution. As agent and supervisor credentials were entered, team structure and permissions were carefully checked so that the proper contact center hierarchy would be reflected in the new, unified solution. To reflect the needs of all Hapvida Saúde stakeholders, professionals from customer service, human resources, planning, and reporting all participated in the quarter-long rollout.
The implementation integrated all 52 management units at 15 sites into a single ACD, and spans 20 different contact types. Advance planning made it possible to install the solution in under three weeks in November, and complete all agent training in December. The solution went fully live on December 28, just in time for the new year.
THE RESULTS
Hapvida Saúde achieved its primary goals with the rollout of NICE IEX Workforce Management. The company now has a single, consistent regime for all WFM practices including forecasting, staffing, scheduling, change management, and overall operations.
Manual effort in forecasting, scheduling, and adjustments is down across the board. Forecast accuracy has jumped from 74% to 95%. Reporting and analysis is now available more promptly and with much greater granularity than on previous systems, improving both the value and trust in the reports.
The company has also eliminated the days-long delays that sometimes impacted schedule rollout while assignments were checked against labor law requirements governing time between shifts and maximum consecutive days worked by implementing automated enforcement of these standards.
Higher forecast accuracy and better scheduling practices have also increased service levels at a crucial time when Brazil is still contending with the COVID-19 pandemic. Real-time adherence data is now available, giving Hapvida Saúde managers greater insights on an intraday level into how contact center resources are being used.
NEXT STEPS
Hapvida Saúde will refine workforce management practices to further improve service levels. COVID-19 response significantly increased the demand for health care services, putting strain on all global providers including Hapvida Saúde. Ongoing adjustments to meet pandemic- related demand for services will be a high priority in 2021.
Now that the organization has adherence metrics for the first time in its history, Hapvida Saúde will begin making informed decisions based on short-and long-term readings on this new KPI.
