CMS Harnesses Digital Innovations to Enhance Call Center Services Amid Pandemic

The Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services is now using enhanced data management and automation to modernize its call center’s services with the aim of improving customer experience. The need to upgrade became apparent after the pandemic spurred a mass transition to a virtual environment, congesting customer service phone lines with an unprecedented surge of incoming queries about health care benefits, GovernmentCIO reported Friday.

A CMS spokesperson said that the agency’s call volume has been fairly consistent as a result of advanced data analytics, which allows agency planners to focus on reducing the need for repeat calls, finding and addressing root cause issues and increasing the information available on other channels.

The spokesperson explained that one of the agency’s largest customer service efforts is eMedicare, which is improving the omni-channel customer experience for Medicare beneficiaries. The multi-year project is designed to bring Medicare customer service channels up to date and create a more modern, personalized and seamless customer experience.

It was also revealed that the CMS is also evaluating the potential benefits of automation to see how it can support customers. The agency’s recent enhancements to its automated system, interactive voice response, enabled the agency to deliver information to Medicare customers via text message. CMS also redesigned Medicare IVR with more self-service options.

Through the current modernization program, the agency is embracing a customer-centric model to support its approach, the CMS spokesperson concluded.