Hospital Equipment Manufacturer
The Objective
Our customer is one of Europe’s foremost manufacturers of hospital and home health care furniture and accessories. They pride themselves on the quality of their service and maintenance support, providing fast and reliable access to a comprehensive choice of service options ranging from full scale management contracts, through to repairs to their own and other manufacturers’ products.
The objective was to enhance the established in-house helpdesk, by implementing a full out-of-hours provision. Due to the nature of the industry, particular consideration had to be given to the clinical environment that the engineer and technicians would be operating in.
A key requirement was integration with the customer’s established asset management software and CRM tool. The software was developed in house by the customer, so would require bespoke training and knowledge transfer.
Lemon's Solution
An important focus for the solution was to consider the clinical environment, as technicians would be working on active hospital wards and responding to potentially urgent requests by clinical staff. SLA’s and service credits were also tied to response times.
Our mobilisation team worked with our customer to manage the implementation project step-by-step over a 5 week period, covering initial process mapping, system design and build, IT integration and operator training.
As the out-of-hours helpdesk would be working on an evening and throughout the night, as well as the weekend, communication between the helpdesk and technicians on-site could not be done via phone, as this could potentially disturb the patients, and therefore the processes had to be designed to utilise email and messaging services for call despatch. Also, due to the critical nature of the service, it is imperative that technicians respond promptly to requests from the hospital wards, to ensure that patients are not detrimentally affected by any delays.
The customer has an established in-house asset management software that tracks all of their equipment, its location and status. Utilising this software is integral to the service. The mobilisation team therefore designed the internal Lemon systems that would be utilised to capture the initial call details, to integrate with the customer’s asset management software, ensuring that the customer experience is seamless and records are always accurate and up to date.
The customer initially trained the Lemon trainers as part of the mobilisation plans, with particular focus on the bespoke software. The Lemon team then produced the training material, which was subsequently calibrated and 'sense checked' with the customer's in-house training team.
On sign off of all training materials, operator training was completed over a 2 week period, which included practical exercises on ‘dummy’ data within the systems, in collaboration with the customer. All operators were required to complete a competency test following their training before being assigned to the contract.
The clinical and critical nature of the environment means that the accuracy of data entry is paramount.
Following a final stage review the contract went live on the pre-agreed date. Daily review meetings were scheduled to monitor the service, utilising management information reports to provide key performance metric data. Where necessary, process and system updates were made to iron out any initial teething problems identified.
Following a successful launch period, service review meetings were scheduled weekly for the operations team and monthly for senior stakeholders.
The Results
The objective was achieved, and Lemon now provide full out-of-hours coverage, that successfully delivers the service within the complexities of the clinical environment, and the customer consistently exceeds their service level requirements.
The experience for the end user is now seamless, regardless of the time of contact, and all records within the asset management software are kept accurate and up-to-date, preventing any inconsistencies of customer data, which was historically a risk.
The flexibility of the solution and strength of the partnership, has enabled the customer to utilise the service as part of their business continuity planning and to assist with ad-hoc coverage of the in-house helpdesk when required, such as for team meetings or unexpected spikes in call traffic.
