Outsourcing Patient Contact Center Services: Elevating Experience, Driving Efficiency, and Reducing Cost to Serve
Overview
A world-class dermatology and surgical group–home to some of the country’s most respected and highly qualified dermatologists, surgeons, practitioners, and aestheticians–operates 230+ clinics across 26 states. The group partnered with Knack in 2024.
Due to superior performance, Knack quickly proved its value and became the group’s offshore contact center partner for patient scheduling, billing, payment calls, and technical support. The relationship continues to expand due to Knack’s high performance and seamless integration.
Challenge
In 2024, the medical group launched a strategic initiative to offshore key contact center functions with the goal of:
- Improving patient satisfaction by reducing average speed to answer (ASA), average handling time (AHT)
- Lowering the cost by leveraging a trusted offshore partner in the Philippines
While corporate leadership led the shift, some providers were hesitant about outsourcing patient-facing services.
Success in this initiative depended upon:
- Meeting and maintaining Practice and Physician customer-centricity goals
- Complete knowledge transfer while maintaining high client, practitioner, and patient satisfaction
- Ensuring that Knack’s team effectively integrated into existing teams, systems, and workflows
- Align on staffing and training— respecting practitioner preferences for scheduling and billing
- Mange potential risks related to patient and office communication, billing, payment and technical issue resolution, and efficiency initiatives, and securing timely access to necessary tools and portals
Solution
To address Client challenges and meet their objectives, Knack implemented a comprehensive solution built on three
pillars: resource identification, training, and collaboration.
Resource Identification
Knack implemented a rigorous recruitment and interview process to secure highly experienced customer service representatives (CSR) professionals, and selected seasoned managers (5+ years experience) to lead the team. These account managers handle day-to-day client communication, monitor service quality and
efficiencies, and drive ongoing improvements. Supporting the core CSR team are specialists in client services, reporting & analytics, workforce management, operational support, and quality assurance.
The Supervisor/QA Support to CSR ratio is maintained at 1:10 to ensure close oversight.
Integrated Training Strategy
Knack developed a comprehensive training plan in partnership with client leadership. The plan included daily training sessions, focusing on achieving training objectives and establishing Standard Operating Procedures (SOPs) along with skill certifications. Training priorities were based on the complexity of the process/workflow and rolled out in three structured phases:
- Phase 1 – Billing and Payments Team
- Phase 2 – Scheduling Team, adding clinic and specialty groups based on location and complexity to Knack scope.
- Phase 3 – Technical Support Team
Results
Knack’s partnership enabled the client to successfully optimize its revenue cycle management operations by redeploying internal teams to focus on the most highly complex tasks.
“It’s clear that your efforts are making a real difference— not just in our team metrics but most importantly for the patients we support every day. Your team’s commitment, attention to detail, and willingness to go the extra mile have not gone unnoticed. It’s a privilege to work alongside such a dedicated group of team members, and I am truly grateful for the consistency and care you bring to everything you do.”