Healthcare Services Desk Case Study: Auxis Swiftly expand Medical Equipment company’s Support Team

CLIENT PROFILE

Our client is a high-growth medical equipment company focused on helping customers with a wide spectrum of injuries and diseases maintain personal independence. The private equity-backed company supports more than 260,000 adults and pediatrics, with estimated annual revenue of about $650 million. Since it was founded more than 20 years ago, it has grown to 2,800+ employees and 150 locations across the U.S.

BUSINESS CHALLENGE

With surging demand for its assistive products, the client was enjoying rapid growth. But the business boom also triggered an exploding number of requests for technical support from employees maintaining medical equipment in the field.

The client’s small internal help desk quickly became a pain point, unable to keep up with an average 500 calls per day and 3,000 tickets per month. Service levels were poor and inconsistent - impacting customer satisfaction and souring the relationship between the business and IT.

Key challenges included:

The help desk operated in firefighting mode. Any call could be fielded by any team member, distracting high-level resources from more important work.

High turnover of help desk staff impacted training costs and consistency of service. North American help desks experience average turnover of 40% per year.

The client needed to swiftly expand its help desk to keep pace with its rapid business growth. However, a severe IT labor shortage in the U.S. made it extremely difficult for the client to replace or hire help desk staff quickly or cost-effectively.

The overburdened help desk team also managed desktop support. Unfortunately, the dual role stretched the backlog of support requests even more by bogging down agents with time-consuming activities in the computer workflow cycle like imaging, packaging, and shipping new or replaced devices.

SOLUTION & APPROACH

Help desk outsourcing is a proven method of delivering high-quality technical support, providing instant access to the process maturity, tools, resources, talent, and proactive approach that can transform an outdated help desk into a High-Performance Service Desk.

However, the client’s business was experiencing many changes at once as it grew and evolved. An eye toward change management made company executives hesitant to shift to a fully outsourced model.

Auxis was hired to spin up a hybrid help desk team for the client. With high-quality, experienced help desk talent already in place at its Costa Rica Global Delivery Center, Auxis provided the fast turnaround and exceptional support the client needed to augment its existing staff and support its rapid-fire expansion.

Following an “extension of your team” approach, Auxis supplemented the client’s help desk with dedicated nearshore resources trained to use the same tools, the same system, and follow the same processes remotely as internal staff.

Auxis also provided separate resources dedicated to desktop support. Creating teams with a specialized focus sped resolution times by routing calls to staff with specific expertise and preventing desktop tasks from clogging the technical support pipeline. It also created consistency among resources working with field technicians.

RESULTS

Auxis served as a vehicle for faster help desk placement, providing staff augmentation that functions as a seamless extension of the client’s in-house team.

Key results include:

Increased Capacity & Scalability

With the addition of highly proficient talent from Auxis, the client’s healthcare service desk has the resources it needs to handle technical incidents promptly. With a deep tech talent pool and less competitive labor market in Costa Rica, Auxis also delivers the ability to stay right-sized as the company grows by easily scaling resources up and down as needed.

Reduced Labor Costs

By expanding the help desk with nearshore talent, the client saves 25-40% in labor costs without sacrificing quality, compared to hiring similar resources in the U.S.

Turnover Creates Minimal Impact

With Auxis supplementing in-house staff, the client can avoid the expense of recruiting and retaining talent in the tight labor market. Replacing technical staff in the current job market costs companies an average 100-150% of salary.

Beating the U.S. Labor Shortage

With two of Latin America’s most prominent tech universities in Costa Rica, the Auxis team has access to a constant flow of IT graduates with cutting-edge expertise, delivering a proven track record of 24/7, high-quality technical support. Costa Rica also offers a westernized culture, strong English fluency, and similar or shared time zones that make support seamless for U.S. organizations.

Continuity of Service

By preventing support requests from piling up, Auxis helps the client minimize downtime and maximize end-user satisfaction, ensuring incidents are resolved before they impact the business.