Healthcare

Capacity and service analysis on a large-scale UC upgrade supporting NHS customer services.

Client context

Our client is an NHS Trust in the north of England that runs a busy accident and emergency services ward, as well as a range of other medical services across six dispersed sites.

We started working with them as they embarked on a large-scale Unified Communications (UC) upgrade. Our Tiger Prism workplace analytics software was selected to understand UC traffic, capacity and adoption levels.

Our recommended approach is using Tiger Prism to understand the “as is” situation of existing telephony and UC systems before costly installations take place.

This approach highlights peaks and troughs in current call patterns, where trunk capacity is insufficient to meet demand and whether customer service KPIs are being met. Armed with this information, organisations can accurately define the “to be” vision for their UC network.

Our client used existing data to define the scale and structure of its UC solution, but wanted to use Tiger Prism to monitor and measure its UC network once it was installed. Tiger Prism would help to determine where fine turning to the network was required.

Sector Healthcare

Employees 14,000

Sites 6

Location UK

Workplace analytics

  • Call volume and patterns
  • Trunk capacity
  • Channel use
  • Resource planning
  • Maximising return on technology investment

Client goals

Data needed to be collected from all six sites within the Trust which the UC upgrade was consolidating into one centralised network.

Essential information included call traffic peaks and troughs, which would support staff resourcing and cost management and capacity monitoring to verify how the UC network was structured.

Tiger Prism data on call pick up times and duration was also needed for cross-referencing with customer satisfaction feedback.

Tiger response

We employed the full feature set of Tiger Prism to give our client a detailed picture of how their UC network was operating.

Workplace analytics included call volume and traffic patterns at a top level, a supporting analysis of trunk capacity to ensure demand could be met and a further assessment of whether all channels were being used effectively to meet customer service KPIs.

Equally, traffic patterns were compared to staff rotas to see whether the people resource matched demand.

Business impact

Several pieces of fundamental information resulted from our workplaces analytics.

The first was that 30% of the channels built into the UC network had never carried a call. There was significantly more capacity than needed.

This meant, however, that unused channels could be redeployed to alleviate bottlenecks and future expansion could be accommodated easily.

The most significant bottle neck was in the customer service department. Analytics revealed a high volume of calls, slow pick up times and lengthy call duration times.

It became apparent that there was a high percentage of new staff in this department, meaning inexperienced people were dealing with a high volume of calls. More experienced people were deployed to the team and additional training given to new employees.

Tiger Prism analytics also showed that 75% of incoming calls happened between 10.30 and 14.30. Our client’s customer satisfaction survey, however, revealed that 24% of incoming calls during busy periods were greeted with a “busy line” tone.

Unused channels could be redeployed to support this peak in demand and people resource could also be increased during these periods.

Overall, because of the analytics we provided, our client was able to restructure its UC network to meet peak demand and better service its customers. It was also able to maximise the benefits of its investment in UC technology.

…our client was able to restructure its UC network to meet peak demand and better service its customers.