How CompoundLabs adapted their phone system during COVID-19

Background

Proudly New Zealand owned and operated, CompoundLabs is a compounding pharmacy that formulates high quality, customised healthcare products for customers from around New Zealand.

The team of 25 includes pharmacists and pharmacy technicians who make a range of products, all from scratch, including day-to-day supplements, creams, and gels; while customer service staff provide high quality, personalised service to clients. CompoundLabs operates both an online and a physical store in Auckland, from where they also supply prescription medicines.

The challenge

For CompoundLabs, the challenge with their existing telephone system was threefold. 

It wasn’t intuitive enough for their needs – they couldn’t change the way calls were routed, their voicemail, or create a tiered system to direct calls to the right staff.

“To be fair, we did have a way to route calls, but we couldn't change it ourselves and had to contact our provider each time,” says Operations Manager Roshika Ebenezer.

Secondly, the service received from their previous telco was slow, sometimes non-existent. “They hardly answered and were not easy to communicate with,” says Roshika.

And lastly, the system wasn’t smart. “It didn’t provide useful information like the number of calls received, the time to answer, the call duration, who’s on the phone and who’s not. Never mind integration with HubSpot to keep our customer notes up to date.”

The solution

Cradle helped the team at CompoundLabs to install the desktop app and, for the management team, the mobile app too. The desktop app meant the team could make and receive calls from their work computers while the mobile app enabled the management team to make and receive calls from anywhere with a Wi-Fi or 4G connection.

Everyone also received a Jabra headset. These integrate seamlessly with Cradle, working with both the desktop and mobile apps, giving the best call experience possible.

“Set up and training was quick and easy. In fact, it’s so straightforward you don’t even need to read the manual,” says Roshika.

Behind the scenes, the app integrated with HubSpot, connecting all CompoundLab’s customer contacts. The team at Cradle also created a smart tiered routing system. Tier one is customer service and admin team members. Customer calls are routed to this team first. Tier two is pharmacy technicians who would receive calls if everyone in tier one is busy. And lastly, tier three is pharmacists who can help to take calls during exceptionally busy times.

The outcome 

For the CompoundLabs there were four key outcomes:

1. Outstanding customer service and value for money:

Cradle allows CompoundLabs to make and receive an unlimited number of calls for a fixed price per staff user. That avoids any surprises on bills and makes budgeting and forecasting easy.

But more importantly, calls to Cradle are answered every single time and issues resolved almost instantly. “I’m such a fan of the product and the Cradle team,” says Roshika, “[Customer Success Specialist] Joel is amazing.”

2. Meaningful performance information:

Cradle gives customers quick access to a wealth of call information like the number of calls received per team member, time taken to answer, and call duration.

“We run a monthly report of key KPIs that helps us in our performance conversations with the customer service team,” says Roshika.

3. Integration with HubSpot:

This keeps contacts updated and gives transparency of who spoke to a particular customer.

“When customers call, we know who’s spoken to them, the history, and what, if any, actions are outstanding. So, we’re totally prepared before we pick up the phone,” says Roshika.

4. Smart routing:

Cradle gives you the ability to route calls however you would like to – whether it be based on staff member’s skill set, role, priority, or previous conversations with a customer – and to do so quickly. 

For CompoundLabs this meant quickly changing the way calls were routed during the week leading up to the COVID-19 lockdown. With orders flooding in from customers who feared they would run out of medicine, Roshika quickly stopped calls to tier two and three staff – pharmacy technicians and pharmacists, respectively – to enable them to focus on fulfilling orders.

Roshika says while this caused slightly longer wait times for customers, it meant that pharmacists and technicians weren’t distracted and freed to process orders more quickly, reducing the average time taken to complete an order.

“We saw a 250% increase in calls in the week before the lockdown compared to a normal week, and I’m proud to say we managed very well.”

“When you take all these points together, it’s easy to see how Cradle has helped us to provide a much better experience for our customers,” says Roshika.

If you’d like to talk to Cradle about any of these benefits, then please do get in touch. You can message us from here or, even better, give us a call. We’d love to talk to you.