Contact center vendor Talkdesk is making a big bet on generative AI, transforming its technologies and processes with the AI that exploded in popularity with the release of ChatGPT.
Patty Hayward, vice president and general manager for healthcare and life sciences at Talkdesk (in Booth 1991 at HIMSS24), said genAI has a clear and non-clinical use case in contact centers – which is perfect for healthcare, as experts agree are that this is best to prove genAI first in non-clinical settings.
She also said that contact centers are great for genAI because of course there will always be people in the loop. Experts agree that you don’t want to just throw jobs into the hands of AI without humans monitoring and approving the work.
We interviewed Hayward for a deep dive into genAI and to find out what her key message is for HIMSS24 visitors in the exhibit hall.
Q. Why did you turn to generative AI to power your technology?
A. Generative AI has had a huge impact on the customer experience market across all industries. Healthcare organizations we work with agreed, but to realize the benefits of AI in their contact centers, they needed a solution that took into account their unique requirements and workflows.
That’s why we integrated genAI capabilities into our contact center platform, Talkdesk Healthcare Experience Cloud, through our Talkdesk Autopilot for Healthcare virtual agent – a connected, intelligent assistant that quickly and accurately resolves the most common questions and needs from patients and plan members.
Autopilot supports the entire patient/member journey through healthcare-specific integrations, workflows and genAI models built from the company’s extensive experience with healthcare organizations. Autopilot connects to electronic health records and other key systems to autonomously resolve complex needs and questions throughout the patient journey, from appointment management and symptom monitoring to the revenue cycle and patient services.
We also use genAI to help our support agents do their jobs better and more efficiently. Suppose a caller simply wants to refill a prescription. Our contact center platform can instantly collect and organize EHR information about the caller, along with data about customer interactions across channels and notes about those interactions.
AI listens in as a co-pilot for the agent, making recommendations and suggesting answers based on the organization’s knowledge base. All of this happens while the agent is talking to the caller. GenAI enables agents to instantly become experts on the consumers they serve and the specific questions they address.
Q. Generative AI may be hot, but it’s also new. Do you think the country is really ready to tackle this kind of work in healthcare?
A. No one today will trust genAI’s output in a clinical setting without a way to validate the data, as these algorithms still struggle with ‘hallucinations’ and incorrect information. This is not possible in the emergency department or operating room.
Therefore, it is absolutely crucial to only use genAI in combination with people in the circle. Contact centers are natural testing grounds for AI; they are critical to the organization, but they avoid some of the challenges around clinical decision making and allow people to be naturally included in automated workflows.
GenAI is more than capable of improving customer support for payers and providers, who are beginning to use the technology in collaboration with people – rather than replacing them – to improve the patient/member experience and achieve better outcomes.
We designed Talkdesk Autopilot to perform tasks that patients request, but also to seamlessly engage human agents when necessary. We make it easy for non-technical staff to monitor and optimize how genAI works in their contact centers by training and expanding the model as new opportunities or challenges arise with clicks, not code.
Q. What is your key message to HIMSS24 attendees on the show floor?
A. As I said, the contact center is the perfect testing ground for AI in healthcare. It has a major impact on patient experience and operations, there are clear and non-clinical use cases for AI, and there are natural human-in-the-loop processes. And it is an area of healthcare that is in desperate need of transformation.
But I want to be clear that our mission with AI in contact centers shouldn’t just be to make things as fast and automated as possible. AI can absolutely create new efficiencies, and we need them in healthcare contact centers. But we’re talking about conversations that can be deeply personal, and some of them always require human interaction.
AI that can solve transactional chats and high-volume calls frees up human staff to be better at the conversations where they are needed most. And AI can synthesize the vast amount of data a provider or payer knows about a consumer in real time and make it usable by human staff.
This means they can be proactive, accurate and informed representatives of an organization responsible for that person’s care.
As we think about a near future where AI fills that role – instead of just diverting as many callers as possible away from human staff or focusing on having conversations with agents as quickly as possible – the position of the contact center will change. It will not be seen as a cost center, but as a true driver of growth and better outcomes for patients and members.
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