Christian Healthcare Ministries Cut Call Transfers From 48% to 4%—Then Redirected Staff Time to Member Outreach

Christian Healthcare Ministries changed how it handles inbound and outbound telephone response after its legacy contact-center operation became a barrier to anticipated membership growth. According to DMNews’ September 4 report, CHM worked with cloud contact-center provider Five9 and integration partner Waterfield Tech to reduce its call-transfer rate from 48% to 4%. (dmnews.com)

The faith-based health cost-sharing organization had been using a 10-option phone menu that sent too many members into an operator queue. Agents also faced manual processes that limited the organization’s ability to absorb higher call volumes. Wayne Pierce, CHM’s CCaaS manager, said the organization was preparing for membership to increase tenfold and determined that adding enough employees to support that growth was not a sustainable answer. Waterfield Tech helped CHM evaluate contact-center platforms and implement the Five9 Intelligent CX Platform. (cmswire.com)

Five9’s intelligent routing now identifies approximately 80% of inbound calls before an agent answers. That allows CHM to recognize a member’s identity and status and route the caller to an appropriate specialist, rather than forcing the member through the previous menu or requiring an agent to transfer the call. The change is particularly consequential for members contacting CHM about medical bills, claims, pregnancies or other difficult healthcare circumstances. (dmnews.com)

CHM also applied Five9 preview dialing to outbound collections. The organization reported that working through a late-payer calling cycle fell from 22 days to six days, contributing to a 400% increase in collections. Automation consequently released agent hours for outbound welcome calls to every new member and prayer calls for members experiencing difficult health journeys. Pierce said members responded positively to that more personal outreach. (dmnews.com)

CHM is also adding SMS to Five9, planning chat and considering AI-powered self-service to extend assistance beyond its current 8 a.m. to 6 p.m. service window. Those initiatives were described as planned or in progress, not as completed results. (five9.com)

ConsumerEXP analysis: For direct-response marketers and video-commerce operators, CHM’s experience demonstrates that telephone performance should be measured beyond raw call volume. Routing accuracy, transfer rates, outbound-cycle time and the productive use of recovered agent hours can directly affect collections and customer relationships. The central result was not simply replacing people with automation; it was using automation to reserve human attention for calls where personal engagement carried greater value.