State Collection Service Automates Collections and Elevates Customer Experience

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State Collection Service (SCS) handles financial interactions between healthcare organizations and patients. Before working with Uniphore, the existing intelligent virtual agents (IVAs) routed customers to the wrong team, and updating information required extensive conversations with customer service providers.

Upon deployment of Uniphore’s self-service automation tool (U-Self Serve), SCS has been able to significantly enhance the customer experience (CX) and employee experience (EX). They have also achieved a 25% average containment to self-service and automatically collected $2M in the first two quarters of operation. 

CHALLENGE

Critical Shortcomings of Existing IVA Impacted CX and Operations

SCS originally used an intelligent virtual assistant (IVA) to assist its customer service team with interactions as they collected debt for doctor’s offices and hospitals.

However, the previous IVA was limited. It often routed calls to the incorrect team and couldn’t help with extended business services.  And unfortunately, extended business services accounted for 60% of the company’s revenue. This included services such as updating customer demographics and insurance information.

Patients and agents alike were frustrated by the inaccuracies of SCS’ existing IVAs. While they originally implemented IVAs to improve operational efficiency, the reality was quite the opposite.

Scripts were also challenging to update. “We had to go through a long process to complete script changes, and it sometimes took weeks to finalize,” said Shannon Strahan, Business Intelligence Manager.

As an enterprise leader in a heavily regulated industry, SCS wanted to use powerful AI for customer service that could reliably handle complex, day-to-day interactions – like routing calls to the right team and giving customers the ability to manage interactions via text.

Achieving this would free up customer service to focus on tasks requiring human assistance. The right self-service automation tool needed to be agile, flexible and easily integrated with its existing debt collection system. 

SOLUTION

Optimize the Customer Service Journey with a Next-Gen Multimodal Experience

SCS’ search for the perfect solution led to the discovery of Uniphore’s U-Self Serve: an intelligent virtual assistant that optimizes customer service by leveraging knowledge and emotion AI. The multimodal experience improves first call resolution while simultaneously elevating CX.

SCS decided to partner with Uniphore for a few reasons:

Uniphore’s partnership with its existing cloud dialer vendor

Omni-channel functionality to add texting to customer service experience

U-Self Serve’s capability of accepting script changes seamlessly & independently

API integration with the existing debt collection system

Leveraging Uniphore’s U-Self Serve solution, SCS was able to create automated IVA responses and deploy at the most appropriate times. These customized scripts boosted engagement and better served customer needs.

“I have personally worked with several scripting IVA vendors over the years, and Uniphore has one of the most user-friendly and easiest script building tools.  Integrating U-Self Serve into our existing process was painless.

The Uniphore team worked with our cloud dialer vendor to ensure the correct settings and configuration successfully delivered calls to the IVA. Our collection software is often difficult to integrate with outside vendors, but using APIs, we successfully achieved integration.”

Shannon Strahan, Business Intelligence Manager

RESULTS

Improved CX, EX and Increased Collections

U-Self Serve has enhanced SCS’ day-to-day operations across business divisions.

Since its partnership with Uniphore began, SCS has:

  • Automated collection of $2M in the first two quarters of operation
  • Achieved 25% call containment to self-service
  • Experienced tremendous time savings in tasks such as updating demographics
  • Reduced abandonment rates by 3-5%

With Uniphore’s self-service automation tool, SCS has developed a higher level of employee experience and customer experience.

It plans to continue leveraging U-Self Serve to add additional customer features, such as after-hour payment collection and analyzing intent-based interactions. 

“If you’re looking for an enterprise AI tool that is easy to use, a support team dedicated to helping you meet your goals, and high reliability of an IVA, then Uniphore is your vendor of choice,”

Shannon Strahan, Business Intelligence Manager

COMPANY

As a national leader in receivables management, State Collection Service handles financial interactions between healthcare organizations and patients.

  • Handles 2.4M calls annually
  • Supported by 700+ employees
  • Headquartered in Madison, WI 
quote icon

"Uniphore’s dedicated team guided us through implementation. It is game changing to have a group of specialists who know your business, know your scripting, and are so responsive."

Shannon Strahan,
Business Intelligence Manager

USE CASE

Automate collections and enhance employee experience (EX) and customer experience (CX) using conversational self-service AI 

GOALS

  • Leverage conversational AI to properly route calls
  • Simplify patient demographics and insurance updates
  • Incorporate optional text functionality for easier customer management 

SOLUTION

U-Self Serve, equipped with custom scripts, customer texting functionalities and intelligent virtual agents (IVAs) that understand, empathize and resolve issues at scale.  

U-Self Serve Resources

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