Ault International Medical Management

“Our ability to just send over an email to the service team at Accent has been phenomenal. We can put (our requirements) in plain english and inevitably somebody from Accent is quick to respond.  It’s pretty clear to me that it’s not just one person at Accent, but that the entire team has some understanding and knowledge of who we are and what’s unique about us and how our phone system works.”

Deb Ault

President, AIMM

On a quest to fix the broken U.S. healthcare system, Ault International Medical Management (AIMM), strives to help patients navigate the cumbersome processes and exorbitant costs of today’s medical care systems and healthcare benefits plans.

“A lot of people would say healthcare in America is broken, I would say it’s not broken, it’s just rigged against the patient and the person paying for the patient’s care,” says Deb Ault, President of AIMM.  “The number of bankruptcies that occur in this country because of medical debt is over 65%, and over half of those people had health insurance and they’re still being driven into bankruptcy. Fixing that is what we’re really all about.”

“We come along patients telephonically and we handhold them through the two most cumbersome ecosystems in the healthcare universe,” remarks Deb.  Due to their mission, AIMM’s phone system and it’s capabilities are extremely important to the business.  “We’re kind of unique, we have an extremely complicated call center here.”

As the 2020 COVID pandemic unfolded, AIMM began to assess their then-current phone system and where it needed to improve for the business.  As a customer of Accent’s, AIMM was pleased with the experience but wanted to evolve their contact center into the next generation of possibilities.  “Our first phone system worked great and worked great for a very, very long time,” remarks Deb. “We had been with Accent (prior to 2020) and had a very good experience with Accent.”

However, the 2020 search for a new phone system would include a list of new vendors as AIMM looked to push their technology to the next level. “Like every organization in 2020, we were looking at everything going on across the globe (and asking) should we be making changes. We knew we needed to upgrade the technology piece and so we went out and instead of just going to Accent we went to multiple vendors and surveyed what they had.”

That decision process ultimately resulted in AIMM choosing a “big box” cloud phone provider and migrating awaiting from Accent to the “big box” platform in 2020.  The results were extremely disappointing for AIMM. 

“Unfortunately, that other vendor significantly under delivered,” says Deb. “We got talked into by another vendor that they could do it better, faster, cheaper. Boy was that an unmitigated disaster. So we came back.”

After a year with the “big box” cloud provider that couldn’t deliver the promises made to AIMM, Deb contacted Accent to help fix the contact center and get business operation back on track. Accent answered the call, quickly implementing our cloud contact center solution and fulfilling the promise of new technology that performed for AIMM’s users and customers.

“That key understanding and that partnership of knowing us as a business and who we are and what we’re trying to accomplish and how our workflow works, that was really key in getting (the system) programming correct,” says Deb. But it wasn’t just the people and execution of the promise that has helped Accent stand apart in AIMM’s eyes, the technology and platform capabilities also make a difference.

“One of the reasons that we’re really happy with the phone system we have right now is because we’ve deployed a natural language processing artificial intelligence software that listens in to every single phone call.” That capability, among many others, has been a critical element of helping AIMM achieve their goals of providing excellent customer service while simultaneously scaling the fast-growing business.

“From a technology standpoint it (the phone system) has all the capabilities that we needed to have as we’re scaling, as we’re growing, and as we’re making sure our team is delivering high quality and delivering consistently.”

Tracking call statistics and agent performance is also a key element of AIMM’s customer service success. “I kind of joke and say that I watch phone stats like Wall Street watches the ticker tape,” laughs Deb. “We’re watching everything. We like for sick patient phone calls to be answered in less than one minute.”  To deliver that level of customer service, a contact center solution that provides real-time actionable data is critical for AIMM.  “We’re watching average speed to answer, how many calls are in queue, how many agents are logged in to take calls. All those things are really critical to making sure we are delivering consistently on what we promised our customers.”

As AIMM pushes into the future with its vision of an improved U.S. healthcare system, Accent is there to assist and deliver the communication and contact center technology necessary to help achieve their goals. “I don’t want to give away any of the secret sauce we’ve been working on, but there is a lot of technological solutions that we have the capability to do now that we didn’t with other systems,” says Deb.

However, it’s not just the technology that helps Accent standout from the competition.  Accent’s commitment to customer success is ultimately what sets us apart from the rest. “Our ability to just send over an email to the service team at Accent has been phenomenal. We can put (our requirements) in plain English and inevitably somebody from Accent is quick to respond.  It’s pretty clear to me that it’s not just one person at Accent, but that the entire team has some understanding and knowledge of who we are and what’s unique about us and how our phone system works.”

That core understanding of AIMM’s unique needs and Accent’s team commitment to their success is what continues to drive a successful relationship in AIMM’s eyes.  “That’s one of the reasons that we’ve enjoyed the relationship and have come back to the relationship.”