While research shows breastfeeding produces several impressive health benefits for both mothers and their babies, any new mother will tell you how difficult it can be! COO Sameer Afsar vicariously lived these challenges with his wife when their first daughter was screaming and crying at all hours of the night, instead of nursing. Sameer says, “breastfeeding is harder than most people assume,” so he and his wife called their midwife, who referred them to a lactation consultant. The support from the consultant was a “game-changer” for Sameer’s family.
Sameer’s experience is a common one, and it’s no wonder many mothers aren’t able to meet the standard recommendation to breastfeed for six months exclusively! Most women aren’t aware of or don’t have access to lactation resources. When the company understood that the Affordable Care Act covered women’s health initiatives like this, Sameer and the Graymont team backed these much-needed resources by launching two brands: Ashland Breast Pumps and The Lactation Network. Now, Graymont Medical supplies medical equipment like post-surgical braces and breast pumps and works with board-certified lactation consultants (IBCLCs).
From the time Graymont launched this new program in 2019 to October 2020, they’ve seen 700% growth in lactation service appointments. Here’s the twist: Graymont drove this exponential growth without significant investments for additional staff or resources and without losing the white-glove touch in which they take pride. The Salesforce platform, Pardot, SFDC Mobile App, Partner Community, Mogli’s native SMS tools, and other applications allowed Graymont Medical to accomplish digital communications transformation while maintaining a patient-first approach. In fact, the company provides even better customer service than they did last year!
Graymont Medical noticed their underperforming communications when their automated emails would get a delayed response, if any response at all, or saw their emails going to spam. They realized that new mothers are texters, not emailers: twenty and thirty-somethings that probably don’t have the time or two hands free to open up a computer and type. This audience doesn’t answer phone calls either, especially with a screaming baby who won’t nurse in the background. Text messaging, however, is doable.
Before coming to Mogli, Graymont Medical used another text messaging vendor whose product “did what it needed to do” but lacked functionality like automated delivery reminders and branching survey templates to track the impact of services offered to patients.
When the company began sending out automated text messages from Salesforce, they started receiving timely responses. One automation, for example, followed up if staff couldn’t validate insurance. An immediate SMS would send, asking, “We can’t verify your policy. Can you send us a picture of your insurance card?” The recipients send a picture (MMS) of their cards, allowing Graymont to fulfill it. Via email, that same process would receive a response only 50% of the time, and even when recipients responded, there were many errors, or staff wouldn’t receive the reply. Mogli consolidates information and creates a quick text message response. The inbound message information precisely maps to the appropriate Salesforce records and fields.
The Partner Community within Sales Cloud allows each lactation consultant to log home visit information and communicate within Salesforce. Rather than using disparate tracking methods that need to be uploaded or integrated into the platform, Communities help streamline the data collection process. Mogli supports Communities, included in the unlimited Mogli user license, so, future-forward, consultants can have one-to-one text message conversations with their respective patient clients.
In cases where email or web browsers are necessary to the process, Mogli sends an SMS reminder that the DocuSign document is waiting for a signature. Sameer and Wade report that this reduces the time the team spends sending and receiving documents by 50% and increases the completion rate of those documents by patients.
Finally, Mogli sends branching patient feedback surveys that consist of five questions to shed light on equipment and consultant performance. Each consultant is attached to a patient prescription, typically multiple, so feedback mapping to the correct prescription and consultant is vital to gathering insightful data. The company tailors its response to the mother based on positive or negative feedback.
Again, this white-glove patient care is a core value for Graymont Medical, so the team will evaluate future automations on their ability to provide exceptional service. Wade comments that the automations will continue to reduce work for patient-facing staff so that they can do more of what matters.