Veyo + Zendesk: Healthcare rideshare innovator improves reply times

Every year, 3.6 million Americans miss or delay medical care due to transportation issues. With an ongoing pandemic, that number is only rising. San Diego–based healthcare-tech company Veyo is working to solve this problem by providing an end-to-end solution to the logistics challenge of non-emergency medical transportation (NEMT).

Founded in 2015, Veyo provides more than 35,000 rides daily to Medicaid and Medicare patients who rely on their NEMT service to access essential healthcare services. With modern technology designed specifically for the management of the transportation benefit and a revolutionary transportation supply model that integrates healthcare-credentialed rideshare drivers, Veyo delivers only the highest quality service to its customers, partners, and patients.

Veyo places a high priority on helping the community through customer experience and relies on Zendesk to help make its vision of being a customer-centric company a reality.

Disjointed data across an array of channels

As a smart logistics company, Veyo integrates data from multiple sources for drivers, customers, partners, and healthcare providers, seamlessly improving the transportation experience for all.

With so many disparate data sources, Veyo Command Center agents were duplicating work and seeing their productivity decrease. Team members were relying on individual email inboxes and collaborative documents to coordinate projects, which limited internal visibility. In addition, relying on collaborative tools had the potential to cause confusion and duplication of efforts. The lack of centralized macros also created brand inconsistencies when communicating with customers and partners.

The need to reduce agent effort—while continuing to meet and exceed customer operational needs—came to a tipping point as the company began to scale.

“As our team began to grow, our support representatives saw a lot of questions around the right language to use when responding to specific requests as well as a need to templatize responses,” said Allison Hill, manager of Veyo’s Command Center, which handles all support and communications with drivers. “Scalability was a critical component of choosing Zendesk in 2014.”

HIPAA compliance and customer support at scale

As the Veyo team began to research and compare different solutions, it identified Zendesk as the industry standard support platform for rideshare applications such as Uber and Lyft. These companies were able to rapidly scale with Zendesk—a key attribute Veyo was looking for in a support solution. As a cost-conscious and growth-oriented business, Veyo needed a solution that would support a mix of full-license and light agents, enabling the company to mitigate initial costs while still having the flexibility to upgrade agents as needed.

In addition to scalability, Veyo also placed high value on a secure system that would be able to meet rigorous healthcare requirements and standards. Zendesk is a HIPAA and PHI-compliant solution, which assured Veyo that any confidential information would not be placed at risk.

The flexibility of the Zendesk platform meant the Veyo team could rely on it for multiple lines of business—for example, Zendesk can categorize different audience inquiries and funnel each ticket type to the associated support agent.

CX operational efficiency saved time and money

Prior to Zendesk, Veyo lacked a centralized ticketing system and would frequently have two or three different tickets associated with a single trip. Multiple tickets meant wasted agent time and resources as well as duplicate work. Today, no matter which team creates the ticket—whether it be from a regional team or at corporate—all tickets associated with a particular trip are consolidated in a single platform.

Veyo relies on Zendesk’s digital fax service to have all fax records tied to an individual ticket, enabling agents to automate email responses and ensuring that confidential information is consolidated in a secure and centralized location.

In all, the digital workflow saves Veyo and their customers almost 2,000 hours yearly. With Zendesk, agents are able to quickly see the historical context of a ticket, reducing wasted time, resources, and duplicative work.

“With Zendesk, we were able to save about $450,000 yearly on additional headcount while exceeding the industry standard for customer satisfaction (CSAT) by 5 percent,” said Hill.

More transparency means higher performance

Veyo’s management relies on Zendesk’s reporting capabilities to understand exactly how agents are performing, both individually and as a team. Leaders are able to see who is closing tickets and at what rate to ensure their hourly remote employees remain on track. Managers are also able to recognize who meets and exceeds the transparent goal expectations necessary to promote employees based on merit.

As products and policies change, and as the company expands into additional markets, Veyo’s team relies on Zendesk’s reporting to identify where it needs to invest in additional training for support agents. This visibility helps managers optimize onboarding and keep customers as the top priority.

Preparing drivers and riders for COVID-19

The COVID-19 pandemic necessitated an urgent response from the Veyo team. To support the needs of its customers, Veyo launched a specialized fleet of drivers and vehicles to transport patients with (or possibly exposed to) COVID-19 to critical care treatments. Launched in May 2020, this specialized fleet requires additional approvals and documentation, and Zendesk has been key in supporting the process of acquiring approvals and ensuring the patient gets picked up.

"Zendesk has been key in allowing us to maintain flexibility during these times."Allison Hill, Command Center Director of Operations at VeyoIn addition to the specialized fleet, regular Veyo trips continued during the COVID-19 pandemic, because patients still needed access to their essential health services. With lockdowns across the country, Veyo temporarily changed the driver onboarding process to a virtual one, and the Command Center relied on Zendesk to help communicate with new drivers and support the onboarding process.

Veyo also relies on its external help center to update policies and procedures around COVID-19 standards and maintain the utmost levels of safety and cleanliness for drivers and patients alike. Drivers are able to easily keep track of updated requirements and feel confident they are delivering a safe ride.

“As a healthcare company, adapting to a global pandemic was no easy task. Zendesk made COVID-19 policy adjustments easy for our support agents to communicate changed procedures to Veyo drivers,” said Hill. “Zendesk has been key in allowing us to maintain flexibility during these times. We were able to make changes to our help center overnight and adjust our FAQs based on our different office locations.”