Metropolitan Pediatrics connects six clinics with over 42,000 patients

Pediatrics holds a special role in healthcare, as parents need to trust the doctors with their children’s health. Pediatricians often watch their patients grow up over the years, so having a patient’s full confidence is essential.

So what do you do if your communications platform is costing you customers?

That was the challenge Metropolitan Pediatrics faced. The practice includes six clinics spread out across Portland, serving around 42,000 patients. They work with patients and their families, to the point where many parents bringing their kids in are former patients themselves—their customers’ trust can keep families coming back for literal generations.

Metro Pediatrics’ Chief Medical Information Officer, TJ Anderson, saw that simple communication tasks like transferring calls were an unnecessary struggle, and the time spent on trying to get everything working correctly drained hours that could otherwise have been spent helping patients.

As for customer support? Sure, if something went wrong during regular business hours they could try to contact someone for help, but without 24/7 support, they were often left without help.

They needed a cloud phone system for healthcare, STAT.

The cure to their communications ailments

TJ and Kathy Smith, Practice Manager at Metropolitan Pediatrics, began looking for a new communications platform. They needed something that was easy to use and flexible, as well as cost-effective. The last thing they wanted was to get tied up in red tape whenever anything needed to change.

After trying out a demo, they knew Dialpad was the way to go.

The transition to Dialpad was pretty much immediate. Once they made the switch, their old office hard phones were out, and soft phones were in. Getting Dialpad set up was literally as easy as downloading an app (because that’s all the employees had to do).

Now? Metropolitan Pediatrics can contact their patients with ease, and making changes takes just a few minutes. There’s no more red tape, no more complexity, just easy calling (or text messaging, they can do that too now).

The healthcare space has strict requirements for communications, including security for all calls and messages. Dialpad helps them stay HIPAA compliant, so pediatricians and patients can rest assured that their data is completely secure.

And if they ever do need help, the support team at Dialpad is available at a moment’s notice. They can even provide feedback and know that their suggestions really are taken seriously.

Goodbye desk phones, hello working from anywhere

Now, Metropolitan Pediatrics uses Dialpad for their communications with patients, employees, and contact center agents. With Dialpad’s auto attendant, each call will always reach the right person, so there’s no more struggling to forward calls (and no more impatient patients).

And with no more desk phones, Metropolitan Pediatrics’ team isn’t bound to their desks any more. They can now take calls from anywhere, whether they’re using Dialpad’s desktop app, mobile phone app, or a web browser:

“Before Dialpad, we had to send remote employees a hard phone,” says TJ. “There were all kinds of connection issues—it was a headache, to say the least. Now, with Dialpad, they just log in, get on the browser, and do their work. It’s been a real game-changer for our remote workers.”

You don’t have to be a remote employee to benefit from Dialpad. On the go? Take calls on your cell phone. At the office? Answer right from your computer and headset.

Dialpad Ai: A second opinion (for the conversation)

Not only does Dialpad make it easier for Metropolitan Pediatrics to make calls, it even provides support during and afterwards. How is this possible? It’s all thanks to Dialpad Ai—Dialpad’s artificial intelligence.

Metropolitan Pediatrics uses Dialpad Ai for all their calls, including those to and from patients and their contact center. It provides sentiment analysis and real-time transcriptions (all while remaining HIPAA compliant, thanks to sensitive data controls):

“If someone forgot something, they can look back and see the conversation. And of course, if there’s a tense conversation or someone makes a complaint about somebody, we can review it to see what happened.”

Dialpad Ai is really helpful for the contact center team too. It can automatically catch pre-set keywords or phrases and trigger Real-Time Assist (RTA) cards with relevant information for agents.

If a patient has a question about vaccines, for instance, Dialpad Ai can automatically pop up a card with vaccine information on the agent’s screen. If they want to know more about a disease or condition, the RTA card can pull that info up for the agent too, as soon as the name of the disease or condition is spoken:

Getting a call center diagnosis with analytics

And that’s not all. Dialpad Ai Contact Center also provides analytics that help with scheduling, staffing, and management.

These analytics let Metropolitan Pediatrics know how many calls are being made, how long they take, and even the peak hours for calls with its built-in heat maps:

They can then use that information to make sure their contact centers are fully staffed at their busiest times, so no patients or parents are left waiting:

All the while, Dialpad is saving Metropolitan Pediatrics time and money. While the cost savings are nice, the saved time is most important—it means patients are getting the help they need more quickly, and everything goes smoothly. Now, pediatricians can get up and check on vaccine statuses rather than having to check their phone lines.