Do You Want Service or Do You Want Success?

The recent Pulse 2017 conference in Oakland, audaciously described as “The Ultimate Customer Success Event,” at least for me, did not disappoint. Fortunately, I was already in the same mind space as the other thought leaders who came to share what seemed like a singular message – your success is our success. In other words, companies can’t simply focus on answering questions and fixing problems--ensuring customers’ long-term success must be the goal. Here's a video recap:

LIVE FRIDAY | 10 am PST - @akennada deep-dives on all takeaways from #Pulse2017. Follow to watch: https://t.co/nzhetm97rk #CustomerSuccess pic.twitter.com/P4KaRxKScT

— Gainsight (@GainsightHQ) June 5, 2017

For us at Kareo, this message rings true as we keep making strides to provide the best quality (and most affordable) product, while also equipping the people we serve with what they need to succeed. Yes, being equipped means having the kind of technology that simplifies and speeds up all aspects of running an independent medical practice. But that’s not where the story should end. Being equipped also means that healthcare providers, office staff, and billing professionals have the knowledge, best practices and processes in place to maximize the effectiveness of the technology we provide.

Here are some key areas that define customer success for us:

Nail the Front Lines Support

When customers have a problem or question, they need a solution. Quick. This is the most elemental form of customer service – being responsive and available. A good technology partner will offer multiple ways for customers to reach out for help – email, phone, self-help solutions and more.

I’m extremely proud of my team on this front. We’re seeing calls answered within 22 seconds on average, and 94% of our calls are answered within 2 minutes -- 85% of our customers have no wait time at all! And a majority of our emails get answered within 24 hours. With these rates only improving, we’ve had the freedom to turn our attention to other aspects of customer success, beyond quick response times.

Beyond the Basics – Proactive Support

Being able to react quickly and effectively to the needs of our customers is only the first step. As with any relationship – the next level of support involves anticipating needs. To help customers succeed, purely reactive support is not enough – a proactive and predictive way of tracking early indicators of problems or under-utilization of our software shows us ways that we can reach out to our customers to help them realize a higher level of practice success.

Imagine if your software provider identified a problem before you did, and either corrected it before you were even aware or reached out to you in order to help you solve it … proactively. That’s what I’m talking about. Our medical practices and billers get to focus on what they do best and we are in the background ensuring that the enabling technology and products they need to do their jobs are humming along.

At Kareo, we’re starting with our billing platform, which is the bread and butter for independent practices. Getting paid is more challenging than ever – with uncertain insurance coverage, new Medicare reporting programs, and higher amounts due from patients.

When we see that customers have an unusually high number of rejections or a large volume of recent support cases, we’ll be reaching out to see how we can help them get ahead of these efficiency speed bumps. (So don’t be surprised if we call you the next time you experience a snag.)

Listening and Letting Customers Have a Voice in Product Enhancements

Having earlier communication with our customers more often gives us a really valuable opportunity. We get to hear directly from the people using our software about what changes they want to see – in this way, we can prioritize and speed up these changes and enhancements to our product that are going to have real and immediate impact.

For example, because of your recent feedback we completely revamped our patient statements, and the response so far is that customers like you are collecting X% more than before! We also improved the denial and rejection descriptions so you know exactly why a claim didn’t finish the journey into your bank account. (Learn more about Kareo Patient Statements.)

Training for Success, Not Just Knowledge

This is something we’re hearing a lot from independent healthcare providers lately: “We’re just a small practice. It’s tough to stay current, care for patients and run a business.”

We believe that independent medical practices represent an important and essential force in American healthcare today. But running a practice has become increasingly complex. Our job is to help simplify that process and to run alongside practices, providing the technology training and the industry knowledge they need to manage a successful business while providing better patient care.

For instance, in the area of reimbursements, collections, and getting paid -- our training starts with guiding customers to reach technology proficiency. Then additional learning paths offer them the best practices on achieving healthy A/R rates, solid patient collections processes, and decreasing rejections and denials. We know that the best way to increase your revenue is to better collect what you are already owed. Many of the medical practices we work with are under-collecting due to inefficiencies in their patient collections strategy. We’re partnering with them to improve their understanding of and processes around effective collections.

If you’re interested in seeing where you might be leaving money on the table in your revenue cycle, you can contact a Kareo Solutions Consultant for a free revenue assessment.

And feel free to drop me a line at robert.fosmire@kareo.com. I'd love to hear your thoughts!