Shawn Cordner (00:13.038)
Hey everyone and welcome to the Amplitude of Tech Podcast. I’m Shawn Cordner, Chief Marketing Officer of Amplix. This is the Inside Amplix edition of the podcast. What does that mean? We’re going to bring you thought leadership from Amplix employees, actionable intel and insights that we’ve learned by doing thousands and thousands of technology transformation projects. Hope you enjoy the episode.

Shawn Cordner (00:38.606)
All right, Amy Behbehani, welcome to the Amplitude of Tech podcast. This is the Inside Amplix edition. Hi. Great to have you. Can you just tell everyone a little bit about what you do here at Amplix and maybe your background?

Amy Behbehani (00:51.758)
Cool. Thanks, Shawn. So at Amplix officially, I am a senior CX and AI consultant. That’s a lot. How did I get here? I worked in the healthcare space for over 12 years, worked on the hospital side and insurance side in what we call an integrated health network system. So I’ve been in the trenches running different contact centers supporting the community. And I had a little stint in FinTech where I was actually a customer of Amplix’s for about six years.

And then I joined Amplix a little over four years ago as our first consultant. And now I help run our healthcare vertical as well as many other clients, but I do specialize in the healthcare space due to my experience.

Shawn Cordner (01:32.238)
Awesome. That’s great context for us that people can know that what you’re about to talk about here comes from real life experience and insight. So thank you for sharing that. So I I just wanna set the table a little bit. You and I we had a conversation about an event or two that you had attended in the healthcare space here, and you came back and and had some interesting observations about where the market was heading and how people

we’re thinking about technology in the CX stack when it comes to the healthcare space. And one of the things that you told me I thought was really insightful, which was people have as consumers, they’ve seen technology really improve their retail buying experiences over time. AI is just one of those technologies, but even just e commerce has really transformed how people have come to expect their retail experience to go.

Amazon delivers packages same day. Uber gets you rides at minutes. There’s infinite entertainment in the palm of our hands, literally. bank transactions are done on apps, not in lines. Immediate gratification, simple low friction interactions that get outcomes. and user experience design, which is something that we talk about on the marketing side a lot, is really central to how people engage with brands and and that’s all about removing friction.

But conversely, in their lives as consumers of healthcare services, as patients, they don’t experience that immediate gratification. They experience a lot of friction. So talk to me a little bit about what that gap is between the expectation that people have as consumers and the experience that they’re getting as patients.

Amy Behbehani (03:19.042)
Well, sound a little repetitive, but ex you know, expand on it is that yes, we do expect that. When I call my bank, it recognizes me, it knows where I’ve recently purchased, it knows pieces of information about me, and authenticating me is very easy. It’s safe, but also very easy. and we aren’t finding that similar experience in healthcare right now.

So everywhere around us, you and I are consumers, every other entity other than healthcare, we experience that real-time, smooth, personalized experience, right? I had to call a warranty and I called back and they said, Are you calling about your open claim of XYZ? if you are, there is a technician on the way. How awesome. I’m like, Yep, that’s all I was calling about. Thanks so much. I can even hang up. I don’t even have to talk to a human. We don’t have that when we call in to make an appointment.

So today we have to identify ourselves, right? So you do your your name, your date of birth, even potentially have to go as far as the last four of your social, maybe your email, your home address. And then you finally get to someone and you might end up in the wrong place, which happens unfortunately more times than it doesn’t. So then you get transferred to the place you meant to go and you have to start that identification process all over again. And so it becomes burdensome for me, the patient, because I’ve called you many times. I have

My husband there, my parents there, my children there, yet every single time you don’t know who I am. And every time I’m talking to someone net new. And we’ve lost that personalized connection. So whereas I do have an experience today where my private primary care, they do recognize, hey, we know you were here last time. Are you following about that medication that Dr. Smith prescribed for you? That’s the experience we want all the all over.

But they are a small clinic and they can do that. When our clinics start getting bigger, it starts getting fragmented. And there’s a lot of reasons for that. But to answer your question, we’re so used to this personalized quick experience. But when it doesn’t happen in healthcare, we get really frustrated. And that’s the place it should be the most personalized and smooth.

Shawn Cordner (05:30.796)
And what happens when a patient is frustrated with that experience?

Amy Behbehani (05:36.286)
well, they easily, we may not think of this, but patients do have other options. So we do lose revenue, right? So patients can go elsewhere, meaning they may receive quick online digital healthcare experiences that they just have to pay for one-stop shop. Maybe I need a quick check or I need a quick refill. So now we have maybe missed appointments, right? So lost revenue for our healthcare organizations. then we have increased operational costs.

Right. So where the patient is constantly calling over and over because they’re not getting what they need. And so they’ll keep trying again. So now we’re paying, you know, like technology or telco costs or increased volume costs. They’re figuring out manual workarounds that now the hospital organization is having to undo or figure out what’s happening there. Right. And it’s now putting a burden on the staff. And then it thus increases high turnover and staff burnout. And all of that creates a poor patient experience.

And so then they start talking about it. We have so many avenues to talk about us being frustrated. You have your standard press gaining, which is what hospital systems use. but but they need that because it ties into the reimbursement. But then we also have so many digital avenues to complain about. You have Google, you even have Yelp, believe it or not. and then you have various different social media like next door, good neighbor.

Those areas where patients can complain about their experience. And one complaint really trickles quickly, right? Just like we read reviews on products, we read one bad review and we’re like, ooh, I’m not going to take a chance. It’s too much risk for me. So there’s a lot that happens here. It not only costs the healthcare organization in those examples I’ve given you, but then it means that me, I’m going elsewhere and I’m finding another solution.

Shawn Cordner (07:28.076)
It also sounds like a an erosion of trust and that happens, you know, with any brand and any kind of company where there’s a a bad experience, right? But something like healthcare, finance, these are high trust areas, it’s really important that the consumer of those services be able to trust their provider. And if you’re giving them poor experience on the front end, maybe that erodes that trust in terms of the care that they’re gonna get.

Amy Behbehani (07:52.62)
We still seem to, I say we collectively, culturally, globally, we take for granted that that first experience sets the tone for everything. And I do still find that we treat our contact center, you know, our frontline agents as a lost leader where they’re actually your brand ambassadors. They are your front door. And so when they have that first rough experience, meaning a mistransfer or having to identify themselves over and over.

Even they haven’t even reached the clinical portion. And maybe the clinical portion is the best of the best, the top, but they already now have a bad experience and it’s preconceived what they think the rest of the experience will be.

Shawn Cordner (08:34.411)
Yeah, absolutely. I don’t want to disparage any of the healthcare technology professionals that are listening to this by any means, but healthcare notoriously is a vertical that’s a little bit behind on technology. They’re they’re not quick to adopt it and they accumulate a lot of technical debt and it’s hard for them to get out from under it. What what are some of the reasons that you’re seeing that healthcare businesses have not been able to

adopt technology that closes that gap of expectation versus actual experience.

Amy Behbehani (09:06.584)
Well, Shawn, it’s certainly not their fault. Every any leader or frontline, whomever at a healthcare organization, whether a large hospital, a small clinic, a specialty, they really do put patients first. That’s why they’re here. It’s just like teachers, right? They came because they wanted to make a difference. Unfortunately, they experience hurdles. So their hurdles could be that it is a legacy system and they may not have the finances to upgrade that.

So they’re doing a lot of their own workarounds to try and modernize. maybe they’re experiencing some regulatory burden. So maybe they have some security requirements, clinical governments, reimbursement rules that really prevent them from being innovative. And, you know, we also know that there is a lot of competing priorities. d it doesn’t matter if you’re a small organization or a larger organization. Everyone has their own priorities and their own agenda. Your hospitalists.

your pharmacy, your ambulatory providers, everyone has their own and we’re all competing for the same dollar. So it’s kind of who gets there first. And it is just historically that healthcare lags behind, but it’s due to those things. so it is common. Now you ask what are some things they could do, right? I know we hear AI being a CX and AI consultant, I actually grow tired of AI because it is just used so loosely.

When I meet with my clients, I don’t say you need AI. I say let’s look first at where the most pain is and what we can do with the least amount of lift and the least amount of money. so what do we already have in place that we can try to rework? A lot of the times I start with that transfer rate. Let’s just get the calls to the right place. Let’s start there because as we talked about, if the patient gets to the right place, we’ve now reduced the manual workarounds, their multiple repeat calls.

We’ve reduced that bad first impression and we’ve reduced the need to multiple times identify myself. So we start there, we wait for the benefits because they will come, and then we keep growing. So it’s hard for me to just say carte blanche where we should start. I’d have to get to know a healthcare organization, but I will just say I never come in saying you must get AI, because I know we’re expecting to hear that.

Amy Behbehani (11:22.786)
There’s other ways that we can figure out how to make the workflows easier and a better patient experience and reduce your staff burnout without having to spend a lot of money.

Shawn Cordner (11:31.95)
As a technology podcast host in my I’m sick and tired of saying AI also, so I’m glad that you said that.

Amy Behbehani (11:39.766)
I thought you were gonna say I should be touting more tech. I just think that, you know, we don’t always need to add more tech. Maybe what we have is good. We just don’t know how to manipulate it.

Shawn Cordner (11:49.39)
Well, that I’m glad that you said it that way because you mentioned the the workarounds that sometimes get implemented, right? To to you know, the these these office workers, these practitioners, they really need to be like wood or find the path of least resistance because they still have to get on with the day. And it’s a very busy day, right? And it’s high stakes. So y they build these workarounds, but with workarounds comes tribal knowledge, and with tribal knowledge

comes fragility of systems and with fragility of systems comes risk, right? So you can’t automate or put AI on top of bad processes. So talk a little bit about, you know, cleaning up your side of the street before you do layer in new technology.

Amy Behbehani (12:36.878)
Well, there is a saying, and I don’t know if anyone’s coined it, but AI is an amplifier, right? It’s it’s what you said, it’s gonna amplify a good process or amplify a bad process. So as a consultant, I would first do an analysis of where are we at with just our workflows. And workflow, I’m not just meaning epic scheduling workflows, I’m just meaning workflows where I take information and I hand it over. What are our gaps? What are our wastes? Those of us in healthcare are familiar with

A Kaizen, I do a similar approach, not as clinically with doing as much tack time, you know, in the steps, but it’s a similar approach of what do we have? Where can we reduce waste and ensure efficiency and reduce, you know, burden and workforce burden on our staff. So we’ll start there first. And they usually already have the tech, we’re just cleaning up some processes and enhancing it a little bit.

Shawn Cordner (13:31.278)
Do you have any advice for creating a culture that really embraces this process?

Amy Behbehani (13:38.178)
Well, you do need to talk about it and you start with talking about it. So I f I feel strongly that it comes with having these huddles. When I worked at my hospital, we had regular huddles with our provider team, our administrative staff, and our centralized scheduling so that we were always on the same page and sharing stories so we could understand each person’s perspective because we wanted to move how we

Operated. We wanted to move towards a more centralized scheduling experience. And that was a really big cultural deal. That was about 12 years ago. It’s a big deal to do centralized scheduling. And so we had to talk through it and make sure that we were always communicating. It wasn’t just a this is happening and I’m not open to your feedback. It’s a lot of work to do that. It’s a lot of work to champion change. And I cannot stress on us having some sort of champions.

I don’t want to say that you have to have a governance committee because that sounds pretty big and formal, but definitely champions of change and who are those folks? Someone from the clinical side, the administrative side, the leadership side, and definitely a frontline user because you get, you know, that 360 degree, but you need those champions of change. And that really needs to be a priority. And that’s what they do. And they go around and if they hear friction and they hear risk and they hear people wanting to delineate from what they set forward to do, they have to bring those people back in.

Shawn Cordner (15:00.376)
Yeah. I think there’s you know, we we’ve talked about it, but I think there’s a lot of focus on technology creating efficiency, improving productivity, creating margin, like reducing cost. but in this space in particular, patient outcomes is really what needs to be the focus. Can you talk a little bit about how improving technology in your contact center stack can actually improve patient outcomes as well?

Amy Behbehani (15:30.958)
So when we our patient outcomes are about being able to reduce or prevent our hospital administrations or readministrations, right? Being able to detect diagnosis early, being able to help do preventative maintenance, right? Those are our patient outcomes that we’re looking for. So our technology will help us do that. So let’s think of on the front end, patient calls in and they have an appointment and they’re speaking to me, an agent, a human.

And what I would do, this is where I would leverage technology, is it would proactively tell me the agent, hey, this patient is due for their yearly gynecological exam. Let’s close that patient outcome. Let’s close that care gap. And so it would prompt me, because I have a lot happening as an agent, right? I’m being friendly, I’m being personalized, I’m looking at the doctor’s schedule. I probably have some internal teams communication happening. Maybe I’m not feeling well. There’s something happening in my personal life. There’s a lot happening inside of my brain.

And so when we can reduce me having to remember all of that, we increase the likelihood of closing care gaps and having those patient outcomes. So we would leverage technology to do a prompt. So I’m gonna say it, Shawn, AI, but there’s some AI layered in the background listening and reading at the same time. So it hears that the patient is confirming an appointment, but it’s also reading that they are about to miss their one year, you know, yearly exam.

So it’s going to prompt me to bring that up. The patient’s going to say, I’m so glad you mentioned that. I forgot. Thank you. Let’s go ahead and schedule that while we’re at it. Great. I could probably just extend your current exam. So I’m not wasting your time with two visits. Awesome. Thank you so much. Off we go. What a great experience for that patient. Me, the agent. I’m not having to recall and go, shoot, missed opportunity, but we leverage technology to improve our patient outcome and close that care gap.

Shawn Cordner (17:21.506)
Yeah. So just to wrap things up, I know that this is highly dependent on the unique circumstances of the organization that you’re talking to or working with, but maybe you could just give a little bit of blanket advice for people that are listening this and and they hear a lot of their challenges and frustrations in what you’re saying and they want to start making some improvements. I I know you gave a little bit of advice before, but what would you say that they should do

after stopping this podcast besides listening to the next episode because it’s an awesome podcast.

Amy Behbehani (17:54.656)
I would say what the first thing to do is understand what is it that we actually are growing. I know this feels cliche, but is it that we’re meant to are we looking at our patient outcomes? Are we looking at our tech stack? Are we looking at how to reach more folks? Are we looking at missed appointments? Like we need which goal are we focused on first? Cause that is the other issues I hear healthcare entities say.

I want to reduce abandoned calls. I want to reduce manual workarounds. I want to reduce missed appointments. I want to reduce unscheduled referrals. That’s a lot. Let’s pick one and then we will go through it. We will remove the refriction points. We will look at the technology that will help to modernize that experience and we can automate interactions. So my recommendation is let’s pick one and really get into it and claw at it and we’ll go from there.

Let’s not boil the ocean. I know we’re all tired of that expression too, but it really fits.

Shawn Cordner (18:51.414)
That’s great advice. I’m also gonna give some advice. Get in touch with Amy Behabani. let them know how they can reach you, Amy.

Amy Behbehani (18:58.764)
Yeah, I’m on LinkedIn. I should be tagged to this here. my last name’s a mouthful, but I am here at Amplix. You can find us on our website. I should be able to get contacted through LinkedIn. And I think for those that don’t know me and do know me, I just obviously bleed loving to help. That’s why I’m still in healthcare, right? Because I want to give back to my community. So asking me a question does not come with a cost. just ask me a question and let’s get started.

Shawn Cordner (19:24.302)
I love that. Thank you so much for your time and expertise, Amy.

Amy Behbehani (19:26.968)
Thanks, Shawn.