As Voalte has grown, our customers’ needs have grown as well. In the early years, many customers believed in our vision, but hesitated to jump in and implement new smartphone technology throughout their hospitals. Instead, we typically started with small trials of 30 or 50 smartphones in one or two units. After much testing, training and support, we would gradually expand to other units as caregivers and IT staff became comfortable with the new technology and workflow.
Today, as hospitals embrace the huge potential of mobile technologies, we not only have many more customers, but also significantly larger projects going live on a broader scale. The model we used to launch a small trial of Voalte One simply doesn’t work when rolling out 1,000 smartphones, or implementing a brand-new platform across a multiple-hospital system. Now we’re talking about not just a new way for staff nurses to communicate, but a mission-critical system that needs to integrate seamlessly and perform effectively across a wide range of departments and existing technologies.
As Chief Experience Officer, my priority is to give all Voalte customers a superior experience, from product deployment to day-to-day support. That means scaling our services model to meet customers’ growing needs. Our BFFs (as we call our Customer Service team) are always available to answer caregiver questions or troubleshoot challenges that crop up mid-shift. We started with one BFF, and now have a staff of five friendly professionals chatting live with end users every day.
We also have expanded our Voalte Care Specialist (VCS) team to increase our presence in each hospital, based loosely on a supermarket merchandising model. A company like Frito-Lay sends company reps into stores to make sure its chips are nicely aligned on the shelves. In the same way, our VCS team checks on our customer hospitals, making sure all phones are in working order, addressing any issues with batteries or charging, and talking to the caregivers who use the phones every day.
As a result, we guarantee you’ll never see a box of discarded, damaged or non-functioning Voalte phones in one of our hospitals. Our VCS team visits regularly to dust charging carts, check cables, organize phones and battery packs, and generally be our eyes and ears in the field. If Voalte were selling potato chips, you can bet they’d be fresh, crispy, beautifully displayed, top-shelf products that keep customers coming back for more.
