Affiliated Physicians stays agile and responsive during uncertain times

For 40 years, Affiliated Physicians has offered corporate wellness programs such as on-site flu vaccinations and health screenings to small and mid-size businesses, as well as Fortune 500 businesses and government agencies, while its sister companies provide complementary services: Elitra Health specializes in direct-to-consumer physical examinations, DentServ provides on-site dental services, and MedServ staffs nursing homes. Affiliated Physicians relies on the 8x8 eXperience Communications Platform to help the company stay nimble and flexible, using 8x8’s analytics to know when to adjust its staffing or service offerings. This is critical for a company to meet the needs of diverse clients and local pandemic-related challenges.

The solution: 8x8 eXperience Communications Platform

Affiliated Physicians chose 8x8, and didn’t waste any time getting up and running. By early 2014, they had fully deployed 8x8 Work across the company, as well as 8x8 Contact Center to its customer service staff. “8x8 allows us to stay connected wherever we are,” says Weingarten, “whether that’s at home, in the office, or even from the car. If we have an electrical outage or weather event, our workforce is able to work remotely and seamlessly.”

Calls that don’t come into the contact center are now answered by a more robust and full-featured auto attendant. “Using the auto attendant means we don’t have to pay for a live receptionist to route our calls properly,” says Weingarten. “Calls are professionally answered by the 8x8 system, and callers can route themselves to the right person or department.” The company’s sister organizations are also integrated into the system, enabling calls to be routed according to a patient’s need or attending physician.

The flexibility of 8x8’s auto attendant feature has also helped Affiliated Physicians provide good customer service—and business continuity during unexpected events. “When our office closed during a snowstorm,” explains Weingarten, “I could enable our office closure message with a couple of clicks. It asked customers to leave voicemail or, in some cases, connected them live with staff working from home. With 8x8, we can immediately respond to changing conditions instead of having the phones ring and go unanswered.”

Fast forward to 2020. The coronavirus pandemic forced everyone to work from home and Affiliated Physicians relied more heavily on 8x8’s connected services, particularly instant messaging and virtual meetings. “We now use 8x8 for most of our internal and external web meetings,” says Weingarten. “We can easily meet on the fly with as many internal people as possible. Also, we hold client meetings, often with over a hundred attendees, with no issues whatsoever.”

The benefits: One solution for telephony, contact center ops, and mobile support

With 8x8, Affiliated Physicians responded to the pandemic with speed and agility. The company shifted its business model, reducing in-person exams and pivoting to COVID-19 testing and vaccinations. To ramp up, Affiliated Physicians quickly hired medical and administrative staff and adjusted its operations accordingly. Says Weingarten: “8x8’s flexible platform has allowed us to quickly onboard and communicate with consultants and per diem staff, so we can easily grow or shrink as needed.”

Affiliated Physicians also expanded its contact center from one in-house team of 15 agents to several teams totaling as many as 100 agents at any given time. “When we scaled up, almost 100 percent of our employees were remote. 8x8 enabled us to make that change seamlessly.”

Over the years, 8x8 has helped to improve customer service and streamline operations. Call forwarding and the mobile app enables employees to take calls from anywhere. Reporting tools increase visibility into contact center operations and agent performance. Maintenance of 8x8’s cloud platform is much more cost effective as the IT team can configure changes themselves.

“As business continues to evolve for us,” says Weingarten, “we envision using our 8x8 tools to open up new revenue streams for both testing and supporting our clients.”