Providing strong patient and customer support with 8x8

Business Phone Healthcare

RelateCare provides a wide range of services, such as appointment scheduling, telehealth, nurse triage, referrals and authorizations, consulting services and more, to healthcare organizations around the world.

"Choosing 8x8 is probably the easiest decision that you can make."

Jordan Reinhardt, Director of Information Services, RelateCare

"Choosing 8x8 is probably the easiest decision that you can make."

Jordan Reinhardt, Director of Information Services, RelateCare

"Choosing 8x8 is probably the easiest decision that you can make."

Jordan Reinhardt, Director of Information Services, RelateCare

"Choosing 8x8 is probably the easiest decision that you can make."

Jordan Reinhardt, Director of Information Services, RelateCare

“When I said that I just needed phone service, that’s exactly what 8x8 provided,” says Jordan Reinhardt, Director of Information Services at RelateCare. “They didn’t try to upsell at a time when I’m working to solve a problem. That’s what builds trusted partnerships.”

For Reinhardt and his IT organization, that trusted partnership gave them the agility to support an important new client—even when the pandemic hit—while keeping setup and maintenance costs low.

RelateCare began in 2009 as a joint venture between Rigneydolphin, a contact center outsourcing company based in Waterford, Ireland, and the Cleveland Clinic of Ohio. The partners built a contact center practice within the Cleveland Clinic that grew to become a model of innovation in healthcare access.

Today, RelateCare provides a wide range of services, such as appointment scheduling, telehealth, nurse triage, referrals and authorizations, consulting services and more, to healthcare organizations around the world.

With locations in the US and Ireland, Reinhardt’s team is responsible for IT operations company-wide. They support staff, who work primarily in the office, as well as consulting nurses who work remotely from home or other locations.

The challenge: integrating with a client’s phone system

A new client wanted RelateCare staff to use their phone system, but the client was unable to provide additional licensing or equipment to get them set up. In addition, the client’s current solution couldn’t support VoIP connections.

Reinhardt and team needed to come up with a way to deploy physical phones to the remote staff while maintaining one consistent form of connectivity between nurses and contact center agents. However, their infrastructure at the time could not support physical phones without having the additional VPN gateways and extensive setup required in order for those phones to connect.

As Reinhardt says, “The costs were excessive, just on the VPN solution alone, well over $80,000 a year to support phone service. That was cost prohibitive for us when there are more effective solutions such as 8x8 available in the cloud that do not require additional maintenance and administrative resources.”

The solution: Cloud PBX service and Polycom devices

Reinhardt reached out to Lantana Communications, RelateCare’s systems integration partner, for help with investigating cloud-based solutions. Together, they looked for a vendor that could meet RelateCare’s needs without overselling them on unwanted extras or tiered licenses.

Lantana recommended a hybrid solution: 8x8 Work combined with physical Polycom phones deployed to the homes of each remote consultant. First of all, this solution could connect seamlessly to the client’s system while maintaining the healthcare industry’s strict HIPAA security standards. Secondly, it would provide a consistent communications experience for both contact center agents and nurses who would be using the same software and hardware. Lastly, it was simple and cost-effective.

“We didn’t need any additional bells and whistles,” says Reinhardt. “All we needed was audio. 8x8 even helped us take care of the physical phone deployment, so one hundred percent of our capital expense spend turned into an operational expense, which is always welcome in any IT budget.” Crucially, the cost of a scalable, cloud-based solution was dramatically lower than investing in new VPN hardware, especially for a growing company like RelateCare.

"The costs were excessive, just on the VPN solution alone, well over $80,000 a year to support phone service. That was cost prohibitive for us when there are more effective solutions such as 8x8 available in the cloud that do not require additional maintenance and administrative resources."

Jordan Reinhardt, Director of Information Services, RelateCare

An initial rollout—then along came COVID-19

At first, Reinhardt and team rolled out the new solution to their team of nurses due to their remote status. They then added patient scheduling representatives based in the office, who would log into the client’s phone system from their work station and start taking calls.

When the coronavirus pandemic hit, patient care representatives became remote workers almost overnight. Not a problem for Reinhardt and team—their 8x8 solution could be deployed easily as needed. “I had the sense that I literally just needed to gather a list of names and addresses,” recalls Reinhardt. The Lantana team helped bridge the gap by coordinating the configuration and shipment of Polycom devices to representatives’ homes. Agents simply logged into the client system as they would in the office, and they were back up and running again.

8x8’s solution has helped RelateCare respond quickly to such an unprecedented situation.“The worst case scenario was accidental deactivation of a few lines. But it was resolved within an hour—and without having to go through various troubleshooting steps.”

The results: faster deployment, lower costs, greater visibility

With the 8x8 solution, RelateCare was able to meet the needs of their client while saving the costs, time, and stress associated with deploying a VPN-based infrastructure. Due to the solution’s simplicity, the staff is more engaged and reports fewer issues, saving even more IT team bandwidth.

“Anytime you deploy a full phone system,” explains Reinhardt, “whether it’s for 20 people or a thousand, it takes a minimum of three months to get it to where it needs to be. With 8x8, the phone system is already there in the cloud. That removes 90% of the headache and leaves us with just the device logistics. "Whenever a new user comes onboard, Lantana provides the “device-as-a-service” support by setting them up with an 8x8 connection and a new Polycom phone."

That operational simplicity and scalability becomes even more valuable as the company grows. RelateCare can more easily control costs associated with onboarding, activating, and supporting new users, as well as maintaining the cloud-based service. 8x8’s reporting feature has come in handy for both the RelateCare and Lantana teams, allowing them to better monitor operations. “8x8’s reporting tools in the admin portal are my favorite feature,” says Reinhardt. “Almost every other platform offers this as a paid add-on, but with 8x8 it’s just built in.”

An agile operation ready for scale

RelateCare is currently implementing and continuously evaluating post-pandemic strategies that will bring patient care representatives back into the office. One aspect of this is re-evaluating their old setup. Bringing newly onboarded staff onto the old phone system could cost upwards of a thousand dollars per person to get the licenses, devices, and everything else needed. Instead, IT could simply provision a Polycom phone 8x8 connection for these users. “It’s fiscally more responsible,” Reinhardt says. “It allows us to be more flexible as we grow and build hub operations, as well as support new clients in a similar way.”

An initial rollout—then along came COVID-19

At first, Reinhardt and team rolled out the new solution to their team of nurses due to their remote status. They then added patient scheduling representatives based in the office, who would log into the client’s phone system from their work station and start taking calls.

When the coronavirus pandemic hit, patient care representatives became remote workers almost overnight. Not a problem for Reinhardt and team—their 8x8 solution could be deployed easily as needed. “I had the sense that I literally just needed to gather a list of names and addresses,” recalls Reinhardt. The Lantana team helped bridge the gap by coordinating the configuration and shipment of Polycom devices to representatives’ homes. Agents simply logged into the client system as they would in the office, and they were back up and running again.

8x8’s solution has helped RelateCare respond quickly to such an unprecedented situation.“The worst case scenario was accidental deactivation of a few lines. But it was resolved within an hour—and without having to go through various troubleshooting steps.”

The results: faster deployment, lower costs, greater visibility

With the 8x8 solution, RelateCare was able to meet the needs of their client while saving the costs, time, and stress associated with deploying a VPN-based infrastructure. Due to the solution’s simplicity, the staff is more engaged and reports fewer issues, saving even more IT team bandwidth.

“Anytime you deploy a full phone system,” explains Reinhardt, “whether it’s for 20 people or a thousand, it takes a minimum of three months to get it to where it needs to be. With 8x8, the phone system is already there in the cloud. That removes 90% of the headache and leaves us with just the device logistics. "Whenever a new user comes onboard, Lantana provides the “device-as-a-service” support by setting them up with an 8x8 connection and a new Polycom phone."

That operational simplicity and scalability becomes even more valuable as the company grows. RelateCare can more easily control costs associated with onboarding, activating, and supporting new users, as well as maintaining the cloud-based service. 8x8’s reporting feature has come in handy for both the RelateCare and Lantana teams, allowing them to better monitor operations. “8x8’s reporting tools in the admin portal are my favorite feature,” says Reinhardt. “Almost every other platform offers this as a paid add-on, but with 8x8 it’s just built in.”

An agile operation ready for scale

RelateCare is currently implementing and continuously evaluating post-pandemic strategies that will bring patient care representatives back into the office. One aspect of this is re-evaluating their old setup. Bringing newly onboarded staff onto the old phone system could cost upwards of a thousand dollars per person to get the licenses, devices, and everything else needed. Instead, IT could simply provision a Polycom phone 8x8 connection for these users. “It’s fiscally more responsible,” Reinhardt says. “It allows us to be more flexible as we grow and build hub operations, as well as support new clients in a similar way.”

An initial rollout—then along came COVID-19

At first, Reinhardt and team rolled out the new solution to their team of nurses due to their remote status. They then added patient scheduling representatives based in the office, who would log into the client’s phone system from their work station and start taking calls.

When the coronavirus pandemic hit, patient care representatives became remote workers almost overnight. Not a problem for Reinhardt and team—their 8x8 solution could be deployed easily as needed. “I had the sense that I literally just needed to gather a list of names and addresses,” recalls Reinhardt. The Lantana team helped bridge the gap by coordinating the configuration and shipment of Polycom devices to representatives’ homes. Agents simply logged into the client system as they would in the office, and they were back up and running again.

8x8’s solution has helped RelateCare respond quickly to such an unprecedented situation.“The worst case scenario was accidental deactivation of a few lines. But it was resolved within an hour—and without having to go through various troubleshooting steps.”

The results: faster deployment, lower costs, greater visibility

With the 8x8 solution, RelateCare was able to meet the needs of their client while saving the costs, time, and stress associated with deploying a VPN-based infrastructure. Due to the solution’s simplicity, the staff is more engaged and reports fewer issues, saving even more IT team bandwidth.

“Anytime you deploy a full phone system,” explains Reinhardt, “whether it’s for 20 people or a thousand, it takes a minimum of three months to get it to where it needs to be. With 8x8, the phone system is already there in the cloud. That removes 90% of the headache and leaves us with just the device logistics. "Whenever a new user comes onboard, Lantana provides the “device-as-a-service” support by setting them up with an 8x8 connection and a new Polycom phone."

That operational simplicity and scalability becomes even more valuable as the company grows. RelateCare can more easily control costs associated with onboarding, activating, and supporting new users, as well as maintaining the cloud-based service. 8x8’s reporting feature has come in handy for both the RelateCare and Lantana teams, allowing them to better monitor operations. “8x8’s reporting tools in the admin portal are my favorite feature,” says Reinhardt. “Almost every other platform offers this as a paid add-on, but with 8x8 it’s just built in.”

An agile operation ready for scale

RelateCare is currently implementing and continuously evaluating post-pandemic strategies that will bring patient care representatives back into the office. One aspect of this is re-evaluating their old setup. Bringing newly onboarded staff onto the old phone system could cost upwards of a thousand dollars per person to get the licenses, devices, and everything else needed. Instead, IT could simply provision a Polycom phone 8x8 connection for these users. “It’s fiscally more responsible,” Reinhardt says. “It allows us to be more flexible as we grow and build hub operations, as well as support new clients in a similar way.”

An initial rollout—then along came COVID-19

At first, Reinhardt and team rolled out the new solution to their team of nurses due to their remote status. They then added patient scheduling representatives based in the office, who would log into the client’s phone system from their work station and start taking calls.

When the coronavirus pandemic hit, patient care representatives became remote workers almost overnight. Not a problem for Reinhardt and team—their 8x8 solution could be deployed easily as needed. “I had the sense that I literally just needed to gather a list of names and addresses,” recalls Reinhardt. The Lantana team helped bridge the gap by coordinating the configuration and shipment of Polycom devices to representatives’ homes. Agents simply logged into the client system as they would in the office, and they were back up and running again.

8x8’s solution has helped RelateCare respond quickly to such an unprecedented situation.“The worst case scenario was accidental deactivation of a few lines. But it was resolved within an hour—and without having to go through various troubleshooting steps.”

The results: faster deployment, lower costs, greater visibility

With the 8x8 solution, RelateCare was able to meet the needs of their client while saving the costs, time, and stress associated with deploying a VPN-based infrastructure. Due to the solution’s simplicity, the staff is more engaged and reports fewer issues, saving even more IT team bandwidth.

“Anytime you deploy a full phone system,” explains Reinhardt, “whether it’s for 20 people or a thousand, it takes a minimum of three months to get it to where it needs to be. With 8x8, the phone system is already there in the cloud. That removes 90% of the headache and leaves us with just the device logistics. "Whenever a new user comes onboard, Lantana provides the “device-as-a-service” support by setting them up with an 8x8 connection and a new Polycom phone."

That operational simplicity and scalability becomes even more valuable as the company grows. RelateCare can more easily control costs associated with onboarding, activating, and supporting new users, as well as maintaining the cloud-based service. 8x8’s reporting feature has come in handy for both the RelateCare and Lantana teams, allowing them to better monitor operations. “8x8’s reporting tools in the admin portal are my favorite feature,” says Reinhardt. “Almost every other platform offers this as a paid add-on, but with 8x8 it’s just built in.”

An agile operation ready for scale

RelateCare is currently implementing and continuously evaluating post-pandemic strategies that will bring patient care representatives back into the office. One aspect of this is re-evaluating their old setup. Bringing newly onboarded staff onto the old phone system could cost upwards of a thousand dollars per person to get the licenses, devices, and everything else needed. Instead, IT could simply provision a Polycom phone 8x8 connection for these users. “It’s fiscally more responsible,” Reinhardt says. “It allows us to be more flexible as we grow and build hub operations, as well as support new clients in a similar way.”

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