Less than six months after its call center launched voice AI, a nonprofit health system has seen signs that the technology has successfully improved the patient experience.
Allina Health, a Minnesota-based health system with 12 hospitals and more than 80 clinics, began launching Soundhound AI’s call center tool in its businesses in January. The tool is an AI-powered telephone assistant designed to make it easier and faster for patients to get help when calling providers.
Instead of waiting for shelving, an AI agent named Alli greeted the caller, explains Michael Anderson, executive vice president of AI at Soundhound Enterprise.
For example, a patient may use Alli to book and reschedule an appointment and ask general questions about hours, location, services and billing, such as hours, location, services and billing.
Anderson added that SoundHound is also studying features that allow callers to replenish medications and get help finding a doctor or clinic.
He also noted that the tool connects patients to human representations if they need something complicated or prefer the help of talking to someone. Alli smoothly transmits the call without having to restart or repeat any details.
“By handling these daily tasks, Alli helps reduce waiting time and keeps Allina’s employees focused on more complex or sensitive patient needs,” Anderson said.
Minda Garcia, vice president of customer experience centers at Allina Health, said the health system has deployed Alli to meet the growing demand for customer experience staff, partly due to the increased patient demand.
“We want to improve the patients they are in by connecting with them in the way they choose and providing tools for our care team members so that they can have more time to support patients who need more care navigation,” Garcia said.
She noted that at Allina, all employees are considered members of the care team. She said this means that Alibaba is now a member of the nursing team.
Garcia noted that call center staff may not provide care to patients with their hands, but they do provide important support and connections so patients can get specialist care when needed.
“Alli benefits employees by handling routine interactions, allowing our care team members to focus on complex patient needs that require more personalized attention. It allows our team to spend more time doing the best training tasks. Alli also allows our representatives to meet the needs of more patients by reducing more call time by 5-10 seconds,” she declared.
Patients also benefit – 80% of calls are now answered in 45 seconds or less.
Overall, the data shows that Alli does a great job of handling regular requests, helping Allina become more efficient without increasing its staff.
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