Meet Daniel Byrne, Head of Customer Operations
Can you describe your current role and responsibilities at Healthcode?
Since joining last October, I’ve been responsible for the three areas of Healthcode’s Customer Operations: our customer service team members, registrations team members, and our coding team members. I also oversee the support provided by our team in India .
My objectives are to ensure that all areas of Customer Operations performance are in line with the Service Level Agreements (SLAs). To make this happen I’ve been working closely with department managers to achieve better reporting to measure our performance and recommend improvements based on my experiences of leading Customer Operations teams for many years.
What did you do before and how has your experience informed your approach at Healthcode?
This is my 20th year working in Customer Services and for the last 15 years in management of Customer Service operations within a range of organisations. My last role before joining Healthcode was managing BMW’s Customer Service operations for the UK and Ireland which consisted of 180 team members. At Healthcode I manage about 30 staff so it’s different in scope, but my role is still supporting Customer Operations teams and helping to improve the outlook for staff and customers.
What specific improvements is Healthcode making to its Customer Service operation?
Healthcode’s business transformation programme involves lots of changes that affect Customer Operations and I’m responsible for helping to drive that through successfully.
Not only do we have a new Healthcode Account for customers coming soon, we have also just moved across to a new telephony system. Our new provider gives us a new platform to run enhanced reporting and will provide more stability and support.
One of the biggest projects will see us moving to a customer relationship management (CRM) system. That will be hugely beneficial in helping us keep track of interactions, so our agents understand the background when they speak to a customer and are able to support them more effectively.
What innovations can customers still expect in this area?
As part of our phased CRM rollout, we are moving to an omni-channel customer service, which will give our customers the flexibility to interact with us in the way that suits them best, not just the traditional inbound call or email. They will still have these options of course but they will also be able to raise a ticket, book in a convenient time for us to call them back and be able to communicate with us via live chat.
Has there been a measurable improvement in Healthcode’s Customer Service performance in the last six months?
I am delighted to say that there has been a significant improvement in Customer Operations over the last 6 months, and this is evident in all three areas.
In Customer Service we have reduced waiting times, reduced customer lost calls, responded to customer emails quicker and the team have increased their call quality scores.
In Registrations we have been hitting our SLA target when registering customers and responding to customer queries by email.
In Coding we have also seen great improvements, particularly when responding to customers emails, and secure messaging.
What has been the response from customers?
It’s been positive. Take our Google reviews for example., If you go back six months and further, Healthcode was getting one or two-star Google reviews from customers who had a lot to say about our systems and service. However, over the last 6 months we have had 25 google reviews from customers, 21 of which have rated us as 5*.
How will Healthcode measure improvements in Customer Service?
We are benchmarking our performance in several ways but one of the biggest developments will be that we are going to send surveys to customers after they have interacted with us so they can feedback on their experience. This is a key way of understanding how we are doing and identifying areas we can continue to improve on.
What do you enjoy most about working for Healthcode?
Genuinely, I have a lot of good things to say about working at Healthcode and I enjoy working here.
I know it sounds like a cliché but I’m working with a great bunch of people, I enjoy seeing staff around me develop their skills and take on board my advice to improve their approach and delivery.
I also enjoy seeing changes being made to enhance staff and customer experience. I have worked for large companies, some of which are worldwide and consist of up to 50,000 staff, where I found it was it was difficult to implement change as it required rigorous approval process which could be very time consuming. At Healthcode if you have a good idea, you can put it forward and get an answer relatively quickly on whether it can be implemented.
And finally, how do you switch off outside work?
I have two young daughters and so a lot of my time is spent keeping them entertained and enjoying quality time with them.
I also have a one-year-old dog who looks pretty tough but is a big softie so my wife and I enjoy taking him on long walks.
I’m a big sports fan too, especially football. As well as being a proud supporter of Chelsea FC, I play 5-a-side football each week. It’s not a competitive league – we rotate teams – but it’s happened every week like clockwork for years and it’s a great way to get together with friends and get some exercise in.
