ConnectiCare, a healthcare organization dedicated to providing health plans that truly care about improving the health of its members, serves more than 240,000 individuals in Connecticut, Western Massachusetts, and New York. In 2006, ConnectiCare was ranked #6 on the U.S. News and World Report/NCQA list of America’s Best Health Plans.


The company currently maintains a local presence with 500 employees based in Farmington, Connecticut. Part of ConnectiCare’s success has stemmed from its ability to personally provide superior customer service to local residents. Much of the same logic entered into the company’s selection of Coordinated Systems, Inc.’s (CSI) Virtual Observer for call recording and quality monitoring.

ConnectiCare strives to deliver high-quality health insurance with exceptional customer service. The company effectively uses its call center and the performance of its agents to deliver the level of service its customers have come to expect.

“Our objective is to provide best in class service to our customers with quality answers and with little or no wait times,” said Laurie Blier, ConnectiCare’s call center director, echoing the common goals exhibited throughout the ranks of the entire call center operation in a Wednesday statement.

“We receive inbound calls from members, providers, brokers, and employers seeking information on eligibility, benefit questions as well as claim denials. Between the 3 different call centers, we handle an average of 2400 calls per day,” Laurie added.

All healthcare organizations must comply with HIPPA privacy and security requirements. ConnectiCare sought to implement a HIPPA-compliant call recording solution.

“Virtual Observer was compliant, and that helped to cement our choice to work with CSI”, said Lyndee Gray, Call Center Operations Coordinator for ConnectiCare, in Wednesday’s statement.

“When we decided to explore technology that would help support our call monitoring and quality assurance goals, we were using a paper/manual process. When we witnessed the reporting capabilities, as well as the helpfulness of using the screen captures to help coach an agent -- we were sold! What better way for a CSR (News - Alert) to learn from their performance but to actually hear and see what transpired during the interaction with the customer?”

Lyndee also noted that ConnectiCare was able to customize the system and the reporting provided significant benefit. CSI’s technicians worked closely with the ConnectiCare call center team to make the technology provide exactly what the company needed from it.

“Having the screen captures helps us identify where the CSR found the answer, which helps us provide better coaching to our reps. Our supervisors like the ability to focus on a specific/selected group of individuals,” Lyndee added.

To record every call, ConnectiCare recently implemented the latest version of Virtual Observer Logger. Personnel at ConnectiCare noted that the upgrade was the result of some of their own suggestions coming to fruition, becoming usable features of the system.

Virtual Observer allows supervisors to provide better training and coaching to the call center staff. Supervisors would also facilitate “peer audit” meeting, which were voluntary, but encouraged.

During the peer audit meetings agents could hear each other’s calls and audit each other using the form that the supervisors use. They were actually harder on themselves than expected.

The CSI solution has also been used to promote training. Managers meet monthly to play a call and individually score the call. A group discussion follows exchanging ideas on how and why things may have been scored differently. This calibration helps achieve consistency and overall optimal performance in the call center.

When asked if ConnectiCare would recommend Virtual Observer to other healthcare organizations, Lyndee replied “Absolutely. Helping us comply with HIPPA call recording requirements makes Virtual Observer a natural selection.”

ConnectiCare effectively understood that in order to continue to deliver the high-quality service its customers had come to expect, while also conforming to HIPPA requirements, they needed to partner with a progressive application vendor.

The company selected CSI and Virtual Observer as they understood the value in call recording and how it could be used to not only ensure compliance, but also to drive overall improvements in customer service deliverables.

The success of this implementation is testament to CSI’s dedication to meeting the needs of the innovative call center. This new win will also help to better position the company in future competitive situations.

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Susan J. Campbell is a contributing editor for TMC (News - Alert) and has also written for eastbiz.com. To see more of her articles, please visit Susan J. Campbell’s columnist page.

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