This Colorado-based clinic leveraged RingCentral's AI Receptionist to significantly reduce missed calls and increase new patient intakes by 60%.
SpineOne
SpineOne, part of a multi-entity medical practice, significantly improved contact center efficiency, reduced missed calls, and doubled appointment conversion rates by implementing RingCentral AI Receptionist and AI Quality Management.
Region
Americas
Company size
20–99
Industry
Healthcare
Products used
+2x
conversion rate of call to appointment
66%
decrease in call abandonment rate
100%
calls answered
Our abandonment rate and ring-no-answer rate have definitely gone down. In fact, after just 30 days with AI Receptionist, the call abandonment rate was virtually eliminated, dropping to about 2%.
Tessa Kelley
Vice-President of Operations
Transforming patient interactions for time-sensitive care
SpineOne is part of a multi-disciplinary pain management and rehabilitation clinic in the Denver market, offering urgent care and rapid relief from back, neck, and joint pain. As part of the larger Unity MSK network (which includes practices across Denver, Chicago, Portland, and Los Angeles), SpineOne offers comprehensive treatment via their clinic, physical therapy unit, imaging center, and an ambulatory surgery center. The complexity of its services and the critical, time-sensitive nature of pain management necessitate highly efficient operations, particularly within its call center which functions as their main contact center for all of those entities.
High volume, high stress, and missed opportunities
SpineOne is at the critical intersection of patient pain and administrative complexity. When a patient is in pain, their need for a swift, easy, and empathetic experience is amplified. As a result, SpineOne’s operations rely heavily on fast service, often requiring same-day availability due to a saturated market.
Vice-President of Operations, Tessa Kelley detailed the scale of the challenge: "Our Denver clinic logs roughly 3,000 calls monthly, and Chicago's volume nearly doubles that at 6,000 calls. While the call center's core function is call routing and scheduling, this heavy workload often resulted in agents experiencing consistent stress and overload."
Their call abandonment rate was high, resulting in disconnected and missed calls that directly impacted both patient care and business revenue. Agents spent valuable time on routine, low-value tasks like giving directions, distracting them from critical patient interactions that lead to scheduled appointments and better care. Controllable factors like Paid Time Off (PTO) and sick days meant the practice often lacked the necessary resources to answer all incoming calls quickly.
Coaching is a critical part of patient experience in the contact center; however their existing approach to coaching and quality control was inconsistent and ineffective. They relied on "spot checks" of call recordings, which made it difficult for leaders to assess and improve agent performance across the board. The organization lacked the data-driven insight needed for effective training, forcing leaders to assume that the behavior caught in a single call was consistent with overall agent performance. The organization recognized the need for a method that could accurately translate agent performance into actionable training.
We needed to have a coaching method that could translate exactly what we were seeing, what we needed to do more of, and what we needed to do better. AI Quality Management gives us the ability to show live coaching opportunities, using inflection and all the different touch points, to help agents improve their performance and actions.
Tessa Kelley
,
Vice-President of Operations
A strategic approach to the full patient experience
To address these challenges, SpineOne leaned on Eric Malkut, Managing Partner, at Insight Connections Group, Inc., an advisory firm specializing in next-generation communication technologies. Eric has worked with SpineOne for many years and is very familiar with their business. He initially recommended RingCentral RingCX as its foundational omnichannel contact center platform to create a more streamlined workflow for agents. Shortly after, AI Quality Management (AI QM) was added.
RingCX enables agents to manage patient interactions across multiple channels—including voice, video, and digital, all from a single interface. While RingCX streamlined workflows and provided agents with the necessary tools to handle complex patient needs, the sheer volume of calls meant agents were often stretched thin, dealing with both high-priority care requests and low-value tasks like giving directions.
AI Quality Management scorecards set a standard that, again, is transparent for both the leader and the call center agent. There's no surprises as to what's expected, and it drove performance exceptionally.
Tessa Kelley
,
Vice-President of Operations
Data-driven coaching and performance insight
Effective coaching for improving the patient experience was a significant challenge before AI Quality Management. Since SpineOne supervisors couldn't monitor every conversation, they had to rely on random "spot checks," which turned coaching into a risky process of guesswork. They were forced to assume that a single good call meant an agent was generally successful, or that a single bad call represented a consistent, unchecked pattern of poor behavior. This subjective sampling made it impossible to accurately assess and improve agent performance.
AI QM instantly solved this problem. With transcriptions & summaries for all calls, they were able to move beyond traditional customer service definitions by providing coaching opportunities based on conversational factors like inflection and other critical "touch points." This capability combined with call analytics allows supervisors to show agents precisely how to change their performance and actions. In short, AI QM "took the guesswork out of it," replacing subjective assumptions with clear, objective data for immediate performance improvement.
Tessa cited scorecards as the most valuable component of AI QM. These scorecards can be customized to reflect the SpineOne's definition of a good patient experience, and then AI evaluates interactions against those precise criteria. They establish clear and transparent performance guidelines for both leaders and agents. This clarity ensures all expectations are aligned and has proven to be an exceptional driver of performance.
Eliminating abandonment and driving self-service with AI Receptionist
In a competitive field, Tessa explained “we really have to be fast on the clock to answer the phone and address the patient's needs or they'll go somewhere else or end up in the ER and we don't want that for anybody.” Missed calls or frustrating hold times are not just poor service; they directly result in lost appointments and missed revenue. Patients now demand healthcare access that is as fast, seamless, and digital as retail, expecting to handle scheduling and logistics without necessarily needing a human agent for every step.
Recognizing the potential for even greater efficiency, Eric then urged SpineOne to pilot RingCentral’s AI Receptionist (AIR) in the Denver region. This strategic approach led to a comprehensive overhaul of the patient experience. From the moment a patient calls, SpineOne is able to better accommodate their needs in a simple and timely manner. Tessa notes, “I don't know that we would have been as successful without the partnership that we have with Eric and the Insight Connections Group. He knows our business and what will work best for us.”
SpineOne implemented AIR to stabilize coverage and handle constant call volume, a necessary move since, as Tessa notes, "the biggest challenge with live agents is the factor of PTO and sick days; patient calls don't stop coming in.” By focusing primarily on call routing and scheduling, the practice achieved rapid success, reducing their call abandonment rate by an impressive 66%. Tessa confirmed the impact, stating, "our abandonment rate and ring-no-answer rate have definitely gone down. In fact, after just 30 days, the call abandonment rate was virtually eliminated, dropping to about 2%.”
SpineOne has streamlined appointment scheduling into a simple self-service option. The AI Receptionist can send a text message containing a direct scheduling link to the patient's phone, which connects straight into SpineOne’s Emergency Health Records EHR system.
This efficiency has dramatically impacted results. As Tessa notes, they're now "pushing on 30% conversion rate of call to appointment," a significant jump from the previous rate of 12% to 15%.
Seeing this initial success, SpineOne added a link to their medical records software so patients can self-serve in additional ways such as getting test results, checking prescriptions or messaging a doctor. With self-service options in place, the team can now redirect their time to focus on essential patient interactions.
The conversational capabilities of AI Receptionist’s has impressed the staff. Tessa is quick to share that the AI Receptionist has gotten “super sophisticated” and recalls when “a patient called while driving and said, ‘I’m lost,’ our AI Receptionist, Naomi, didn’t just hear a word—she recognized the need for help with navigation. She translated 'lost' into an actionable request for directions and provided the directions needed to get the patient to the clinic. And she sounded just like a live agent.”
Take a quick tour of AI Receptionist
A comprehensive patient experience
SpineOne’s AI Receptionist is fully integrated with their RingCX agents and operates as an intelligent triage system. Through its knowledge base, the AI determines the caller's intent and executes specific routing rules - sales calls go to the sales team, inventory calls go to materials management, and general patient needs are sent to the call center via one main extension. This system also prioritizes the patient experience, instantly transferring the call to a live agent if the AI senses the patient is frustrated or needs more complex assistance.
The initial success of RingCentral AI Receptionist and AI Quality Management has established a clear path forward for SpineOne. Tessa hopes to see the current level of success sustained, enabling her to further roll out RingCentral AI solutions across Chicago and eventually two more regions of the Unity MSK network. The goal is a unified system where advanced AI drives exceptional consistency, quality, and efficiency for every patient, no matter when, how, or, most importantly, how serious their need.
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