Payment Processor Accelerates IVR Development and Simplifies Testing

Summary

A Major Healthcare Payment Processing Company (MHPPC) needed an easy-to-manage IVR system. The company switched from a code-based, legacy IVR system to Plum Voice’s Plum Fuse (Fuse) graphical user interface (GUI) tool, which lives on the fault-tolerant and scalable cloud Plum Voice platform. By doing this, they could deploy a new cloud-based interactive voice response (IVR) application in weeks instead of months, providing quick-to-deploy features while reducing testing and maintenance time.

Company Story

MHPPC is a leading PCI and HIPAA-compliant technology platform provider that provides clients with a solution for managing patient financial communications, patient payments through multiple channels, payment collections and revenue cycle reconciliation.  

Challenge

MHPPC’s experience with setting up and managing IVR solutions was cumbersome. Their legacy IVR system was code-based, making adding features and testing difficult. As the company developed its existing IVR application, the telephony elements became increasingly intricate and maintenance became “very painful,” according to MHPPC’s Vice President of Product Development.

Over time, MHPPC started to investigate new IVR vendors in late 2011. They initially wanted to increase the functionality of its current IVR application, but later felt that a new solution would be a better decision. MHPPC seriously considered four or five different IVR vendors before deciding to go with Plum Voice and using the Plum Fuse tool.

The key selling point was Fuse’s GUI interface. “Plum’s UI made all the difference for us,” said the VP of Product Development, “by being able to drag and drop modules in the application.” MHPPC was enabled to build out its IVR application with new features. MHPPC also appreciated that Plum Voice developed and owned its technology and didn’t simply white-label someone else’s. Plum Voice’s competitive pricing was a deciding factor as well.

Solution

Getting started with the Fuse tool was very easy for MHPPC. Their team built, tested and pushed the new application into production in weeks. The ease of use provided by the tool’s intuitive drag-and-drop UI is “the number one thing you have going for you, by far,” MHPPC told Plum.

Testing, which was the bane of the company’s legacy IVR solution, became much more manageable. Fuse’s built-in cloning feature meant that MHPPC could have multiple versions of its application available for trial purposes. Connecting a cloned version of the application to a different phone number made it easy to test new features before pushing them into production. The new testing functionality and professional services support gave the MHPPC development team greater confidence in their delivery.