For most organisations reducing costs means less people and very often training is an early casualty; those who are left are expected to do more with fewer resources - and with less or even in some extreme cases no training.

The impact of this can have a serious impact on the business - particularly when interactions with customers depend on specialist knowledge and processes and the customer experience fails to live up to expectations when staff are poorly equipped to provide a high quality service.

Many of the systems used by customer-facing staff are complex to operate and require a high level of specialist knowledge - which means the users need training before they are really effective. Mis-use of the systems results not only in a poor experience for the customer but also has a negative impact on the business when the quality and accuracy of the data collected during the customer interaction deteriorates.

A good example of complex processes and systems is the registration of patients at U.S. hospitals which require a high level of specialist knowledge and skill in using the hospital information system (HIS) patient access screens and the collection of the payment for the services provided relies on getting accurate information into the system. However, Patient Registration staff are often entry level employees and are operating in a very stressful environment where they are expected to register the patient quickly and accurately and also deal with a variety of systems to get the revenue cycle data collected and into the (HIS) system. Failure to collect accurate data has a negative impact on the bottom line impacting the quick settlement of claims and increasing the need for expensive re-work!

It is often said that it takes three years to train a Patient Registrar and yet the average time in the job is only two years!

Even experienced registrars have a challenge in keeping up with changing requirements and new processes - such as estimating the cost of the procedure and then how to ask the patient to make a payment for the treatment they are to receive.

Solutions to this problem require creative thinking.............

One solution to this challenge is to build decision support tools which are integrated with the main registration system (HIS) to provide help and support to the registrar to enable them register the patient as quickly and efficiently as possible with no errors. To be effective these decision support tools need to be:

Integrated with the Hospital Information system

The decision support tools should be integrated with the (HIS) to avoid the error prone and boring need for re-keying data once a decision has been reached

Capable of quick updating as necessary

The guidance needs to be kept fresh and relevant by the subject experts - not IT!

Fast and responsive

The virtual expert needs to be there when necessary without slowing down the system or the interaction with the patient.

The hospital patient registration process is only one example of the many systems which can be improved by using a Virtual Expert sitting at the shoulder of the agent and any system which relies upon the user to input data during an interaction with a customer can be supplemented by the use this type of decision support tools.