Go Lean:
One-Stop Shopping
Radiology Call Center uses lean thinking to improve customer service
(March/April 2009)
Damon Lively (above), call center supervisor, and (top to bottom) Randi Prieve, Linda Woodward and Jan Rohraff went lean and streamlined business practices at the Radiology Call Center.
With a more streamlined way of doing business, our customers are continually amazed at how well we handle their requests,” says Radiology Call Center associate Jan Rohraff. “Over and over, I hear remarks like, ‘You would do this for me?’ and ‘You can coordinate these together?’ When I hear this, I know we’ve made a difference.”
Rohraff is one of 12 staff members who handle the internal clinic-to-clinic requests for more than 600,000 radiology procedures each year—about 85 percent of all radiology requests at UMHS. The group recently applied lean thinking to improve customer service.
Director of the Division of Cardiothoracic Radiology Ella Kazerooni, M.D., explains there are between four and 12 “touches” per patient encounter for every radiology procedure. “That’s a tremendous amount of contact. The Radiology Call Center is often the gateway to the Radiology department. That’s where the first impression is made.”
That was why Kazerooni formed a quality improvement team and asked M-LINE, another successful Health System call center, to partner with the group to look at best practices and recommend ways to improve customer service.
Staff cross-trained for all Radiology areas, revamped phone skills and streamlined workflow. Now staff can schedule just about any request, combining multiple calls into one request, and reducing the time callers wait in the phone queue. The result? Abandonment rates and longest delay have been reduced by approximately 73 percent and 67 percent, respectively. And the center’s service level is up 49 percent.
“We wanted to create an environment where staff could enjoy their jobs every day while striving to meet the needs of our customers,” says Damon Lively, call center supervisor and member of the center’s quality improvement team.
The team created opportunities for staff involvement and recognition. Staff met the Radiology physicians whose schedules they book. The Radiology Call Center plans to go to one scheduling line for “one-stop shopping” for callers—and to move other scheduling responsibilities, such as Nuclear Medicine, to the main location at the North Campus Administrative Complex.“
Our patients are the ultimate beneficiary—and because we engaged our staff in the process, our staff benefits, too,” Lively says.
Kazerooni says, “Our measures show that when you engage a group of people and give them the tools, they can do amazing things.” —CM