Business Challenge
As a teaching hospital, our client had two separate campuses providing inpatient and outpatient services. They were also part of a regional healthcare network, and it was this larger organization that made the decision to transition all help desk services in-house.
In practice, this transition was easier said than done. What made it so difficult was that the healthcare network was facing a serious risk that any lapse in help desk support could make it harder for providers to care for their patients and lead to negative outcomes.
Complicating matters was that most providers had a very nontechnical background. When a provider experienced a problem, they might not know how to explain it to help desk support.
“When someone giving direct care to a patient has an IT issue, they need it fixed quickly,” said the hospital’s vice president of IT customer support services. “It’s important to have someone knowledgeable on the other end of the call to help facilitate the diagnosis and resolution of the issue."
Making the transition to a new in-house support team meant risking a knowledge gap as new agents were trained up on systems and processes. In the high-stakes world of a hospital, those gaps could come at the expense of a patient. The healthcare network needed a way to ensure providers would receive the help they needed right away, even while a new in-house team was being assembled.
That’s when they turned to GHDSi.
Solution
GHDSi had served as the teaching hospital’s help desk for years. Stepping up to serve as the help desk during the healthcare network’s transition would require scaling up three key factors of support.
Responsive Customer Service
When a healthcare provider takes time to call a help desk, that’s time they’re not spending with patients. Not only is this stressful for the provider, but it can also be potentially dangerous for patients. GHDSi took that seriously and delivered compassionate, proactive support services to immediately relieve user anxiety and resolve technical problems.
Strong Knowledge Base
GHDSi has years of experience in healthcare settings. That enabled its staff to leverage the information the healthcare network provided to quickly and accurately identify technical issues and guide troubleshooting conversations. Having a strong knowledge base also reduced the likelihood of escalating problems to Tier 2 staff prematurely.
More Efficient Escalations
When escalations were necessary, GHDSi made sure the healthcare network’s Tier 2 staff were fully prepared. That’s because GHDSi agents made it a point to ask the right questions and understand the problem facing a user. These escalation processes further helped to improve efficiency and help desk customer satisfaction.
Results
Throughout the transition period, GHDSi was able to deliver excellent service to providers in need of help desk support. Service metrics included:
According to the hospital’s site CIO, GHDSi has done a tremendous job all around. “They understand the way healthcare organizations work,” she says. “They’re very open and transparent, and they’re very proactive with their communication. They’re always at the table with us, and they’re always looking for ways to improve their service for us.”
Because of this outstanding performance, the hospital is currently exploring ways to continue to partner with GHDSi despite the network’s transition to in-house services. As the site CIO explains, “We want to make sure that we’re connecting and that folks in our local community are being provided with a good partnership with their healthcare organizations.”
“I would recommend Global Help Desk because they’re willing to listen to the needs of each customer. They’re very flexible in how they do the work, and they show commitment to always improving.”
- VP IT Customer Support Services, Community Teaching Hospital
