Managing UC transitions with companies involved in healthcare scenarios requires careful consideration, especially when such a provider supports 36 million patients and handles 400,000 monthly calls.
This was the case when Webex was tasked with migrating and modernising the contact centre technology of Mercalis.
Life science commercialisation partner, Mercalis supports over 500 life sciences customers. Yet, as they have grown, they recognised their solutions are no longer able to support and scale with them.
Thus, the decision to modernise their contact centre technology came at a crucial time. Yet despite recognising the need, and even deciding on Webex as the provider it wanted, the journey to get there would not be an easy one.
Mercalis’ Contact Centre Setup
In 2023, MercaContact lis was operating an on-premises contact centre solution that served as the backbone of their patient support services.
With 1,000 agents providing essential services—from pharmacy help desk support to care coordination and reimbursement services—the system played a vital role in connecting life sciences companies with the patients they serve.
“We rely heavily on technology to support and enhance the ways that we deliver service offerings to life sciences companies,”
Tommy Walker, VP of Technology Transformation and IT Operations at Mercalis, said.
Yet, where challenges arose was during peak periods, such as New Year re-enrolment season, when call volumes typically double.
Self-service options, such as interactive voice response (IVR) systems and customer portals, helped ease the workload.
Yet such a demand meant Mercalis wanted to have new capabilities so they could actively service their customers during this time.
One way they saw, was through the use of AI, more specifically, conversational AI.
“We see opportunities to take a more conversational approach to self-service using AI virtual agents and bots,” Walker added.
Wanting to employ AI, and without need to fund, build and train its own AI models, the company chose to transition away from its on-premises platform in favour of the power and flexibility of a cloud-based alternative with those solutions.
Thus, Webex, with its suite of conversational AI via Cisco AI Assistant’s virtual agents, proved a selling point.
“We were looking to leverage AI to enhance the customer experience for our patients and providers, provide tools that elevate and empower our agents and supervisors, and gain meaningful data insights for our life sciences partners,” Walker said.
Having decided to go with Webex, however, was the easy part. Now, Mercalis had to undergo the process of shifting all their on-prem solutions to the cloud provider.
Luckily, Webex was on hand to aid the migration.
The Technology Transformation
A key component of the migration was access to Control Hub, Webex’s centralised management portal.
Webex Control Hub is a centralised, web-based portal that allows IT administrators to provision, administer, and manage Webex services and Webex Hybrid Services.
It provides a single interface for managing all Webex services, including Webex Meetings and Webex Calling and simplifies IT administrators’ workflows through a rich set of controls, configuration options, and automation capabilities.
It also allows administrators to troubleshoot meetings and calls, measure adoption using analytics dashboards, and configure security, legal, and compliance controls to manage corporate data and assets.
This provided Mercalis with configuration and design functions, intuitive dashboards, and real-time performance data.
“Control Hub is going to provide easier access and maintenance for our technical resources,” Walker noted.
Yet the transformation extended beyond just moving to the cloud.
Recognising the value of omnichannel customer support, Mercalis integrated Webex Connect, a CPaaS solution.
This integration is designed to provide three key capabilities:
- Visibility into the customer journey across different communication channels
- Opportunities to leverage integrated AI for multi-channel support
- Ability to apply logic from a single interface to create a unified service experience.
These solutions will help transform Mercalis’ previously voice-centric contact centre, expanding it not only to additional digital channels for inbound customer interaction and escalation, but also to deliver proactive communications with outbound SMS messages and digital wallet integration.
“We are excited about the integrated capabilities that Webex Contact Center and Webex Connect provide to give us the flexibility to support across multiple channels,” Walker says.
This combination has enabled Mercalis to expand from their traditional voice-centric approach to include digital channels for inbound customer interaction and escalation, while also enabling proactive communications through outbound SMS messages and digital wallet integration.
Laying the Ground for AI
The migration to Webex Contact Center is positioning Mercalis to not only reduce the burden on its agents with omnichannel communication and its Agent Wellbeing AI capabilities, but to take advantage of advanced AI capabilities for further optimisation.
“We plan on using the Cisco AI Assistant to enhance the customer experience by using data-driven insights to understand who’s calling, if they’ve called before, and what types of interactions we’ve had,” Walker said.
This, Mercalis hope, will enable them to make more informed decisions about call routing and improve connection times to appropriate resources.
Another time-saving endeavour they are keen to explore is conversation summaries, even in call transfers.
“The ability to transfer the call with a summary of the conversation, where it left off, and what the agent needs next accelerates the opportunity to identify why someone’s calling and how we need to solve the problem to deliver an excellent customer experience,” Walker explained.
This means that omnichannel services not only bring breathing space, but can take out a lot of the leg work for when agents finally pick up the conversation too.
In addition, Walker is looking forward to using Topic Analytics to identify frequent topics of conversation between agents and customers and use this insight to monitor trends, improve training, and enhance self-service.
For organisations contemplating their own cloud migration journey, Mercalis’s experience demonstrates how a strategic technology transition can lay the foundation for enhanced customer service and continued innovation in healthcare support.
This post originally appeared on Service Management - Enterprise - Channel News - UC Today.