The UberEats of Health Care: How Scarlet Health’s Remote Team Win on Customer Experience

In February 2022, hundreds of leaders from service businesses across the world gathered together online to take part in the Global Frontline Experience Summit, an event we are delighted to sponsor and host again after its hugely successful first run in 2020. It was a phenomenal event with a contagious heaping of inspiration, excitement and possibility for anyone working in the customer experience and frontline service space.

If you missed the summit, brought to you by our Frontline Magic Community don't worry! All of the‍ sessions are available right here, and are just as powerful the second time around.

With a few taps on a smartphone, we can do almost anything from the comfort of our homes. Hungry? Order UberEats. Need a babysitter for the night? Jump on the Sittercity app. Need a cleaner? Organize it online. 

With that said, the incredible advancements we’ve made in the last decade would not be possible without two things: 1) technology and 2) frontline teams. Think about it: every time you order UberEats, you need to use the app to place, track and receive your order, and you also need someone to drive to your house and deliver your delicious hot ramen to your doorstep. Without these two crucial, highly connected components, you’d be scraping out the last of your peanut butter onto the crust of some sad, old bread. Frontline teams, supported by technology allow us to enjoy awesome experiences and live a life of convenience, with the world at our fingertips.

Two people who know first-hand the power of using technology to support and enable frontline teams are Vinny Pacione and Jami Kaliebe. Vinny is the Vice President of Consumer Technology and Digital Solutions at BioReference, and Jami is the Vice President of Scarlet Health Delivery, an in-home diagnostic service to expand digital health access, owned by BioReference. Nick Smith, director of product marketing for AskNicely interviews Jami and Vinny on the importance of technology for building a culture of self-improvement for the mobile workforce. 

Having more than 15 years of experience in the field, Vinny is passionate about solving problems with technology in the healthcare domain. In a world where time, convenience and personalization are key elements that make up a positive customer experience, Vinny questioned why this was not the case when it came to healthcare. 

“If I can summon literally anything in my house with this phone, why can't we set that same standard for healthcare?” 

With that, Scarlet Health was born. 

Frontline Drives Success 

Only being one year old and operating on a national level, Scarlet Health is nothing without their frontline staff. Much like your ramen without the UberEats driver, Jami acknowledges that technology would be meaningless without the hard work of the frontline phlebotomists (say that 3 times fast). 

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“This product is already nothing without the frontline staff that are out there going to people’s homes every day.”

Scarlet Health depends on the hundreds of phlebotomists across the country to deliver exceptional service to their patients. Unlike traditional non-remote phlebotomists, Scarlet Health’s employees take on additional administration and delivery duties, as they visit dozens of homes in various different locations, all while sticking to a tight daily schedule. 

Despite frontline workers being today’s superheroes, unfortunately, they don’t have superpowers. So how do Scarlet’s frontline team keep up?

This is where technology comes in. 

Technology Enables Success 

Considering the complex job that the frontline employees are already taking on, Vinny walks us through the importance of technology for Scarlet Health. 

“Anything we can do to take work off that frontline employees' plate through using technology through automation, through intelligent contextual interactions is all going to help drive that additional value”. 

Utilizing technology means that the frontline workers can really focus on what they love doing: interacting with and supporting patients, and providing an excellent experience. 

Using technology, Scarlet Health’s employees are able to: 

• Keep track of their daily schedule 
• Manage patient interactions 
• Check orders 
• Keep track of milestones 
• Gain instant access patient information
• Utilize useful software integrations  

….All with a few taps on their phones. 

During the pandemic, 80% of business managers accelerated the implementation of new technologies in the workplace. But as the pandemic curves begin to flatten, mobile workforces are here to stay. With that, comes the responsibility to connect frontline teams to useful technology that they can use to manage and improve their daily work. 

The Value of Real-Time Feedback

In a non-remote working environment, the need for real-time customer feedback is as important as ever. But take that team into a remote setting, and that feedback becomes even more important. When managing a remote workforce, it can be difficult to ensure employees feel connected, supported and valued in their work. It's hard for employees to know what they're doing right, what they're doing wrong, and how to improve. For Jami, knowing just how important her frontline team was, she needed a viable solution. And that solution was AskNicely. 

Through implementing AskNicely, Scarlet Health was able to support the frontline and provide them with an opportunity “to shine”. 

“Being able to have that kind of real-time feedback and kind of finger on the pulse of what's happening out there in the real world, it’s pretty amazing”. 

Frontline phlebotomists receive real time customer feedback from their patients, and are provided with necessary information for immediate action. Real-time feedback encourages the frontline and gives an opportunity to measure, improve, and ultimately do their jobs better. 

Plus, in addition to real-time customer feedback, Scarlet Health’s frontline team gain access to:

• Recognition: when the phlebotomists deliver exceptional service, they’re recognized and celebrated for their work. 
  
  
• Coaching: Scarlet Health managers are able to see patterns in what their frontline employees need more support in, creating meaningful starting points for coaching conversations.
  
  
• Employee feedback: phlebotomists and managers have a direct line of communication, which they can use to provide their own feedback, share patient insights and stay connected no matter where they are.
  
  
• Insights: phlebotomists are able to see how their incredible work directly impacts wider company KPIs.

• Workflows: which helps them to take action on customer feedback and drive advocacy.
  

…all within one single app. 

God bless technology. 

To summarize: 

• A business is nothing without the frontline, they drive the experience.
  
  
• Frontline teams deserve technology that helps them do their jobs better.
  
  
• Real-time customer feedback is an essential ingredient to any remote, or non-remote frontline workforce. 

A huge THANK YOU to both Jami and Vinny for sharing their stories, wisdom and expertise. Want to see more presentations from the Global Frontline Experience Summit? We’ll be releasing blogs every week diving into all the juicy insights from our incredible lineup of speakers. In the meantime, you can join the Frontline Magic Community to receive updates, frontline news and more!