Scaling Success: Strategies for Medical Information Contact Centers Facing High Demand

Efficient contact centers with highly trained agents play a key role in the launch of a new therapy. Here are strategies to ensure success.

Launching a new therapy — whether it’s a first product or an addition to a portfolio — is an exciting milestone. But success depends on more than approval. Health care providers (HCPs), pharmacists and patients need reliable support, and efficient contact centers with highly trained agents play a key role. Early in a product’s life cycle, call volumes can surge as stakeholders navigate prescribing, reimbursement and safety concerns. Skilled agents help manage these spikes, ensuring fast, accurate and compliant responses that improve customer experience and support market success.

Call volume forecasting is essential to prevent bottlenecks and keep operations running smoothly. By analyzing similar drugs, expected prescriptions and regulatory needs like REMS, demand can be better managed. Typically, calls peak in the first three months post-launch, making it critical to have trained agents, intelligent call routing and self-service options in place.

Even with strong forecasting, unexpected surges happen due to external factors. Off-label use, insurance hurdles, safety concerns, social media trends and market shifts can all impact demand. As clinical trial protocols grow more complex, navigating the evolving post-market regulatory landscape also becomes increasingly challenging. Having a team prepared to handle high volumes and provide compliant, informed responses is key to keeping pace.

That’s why it’s so important to recognize the early signs of sustained high demand and have a plan in place to respond with flexibility and precision. Whether it means fine-tuning existing resources or scaling up your team, the right approach can make the difference between simply managing volume and delivering an exceptional customer experience. Successful strategies are shaped by lessons learned through successful partnerships, and real-world approaches help teams stay ahead of the curve and maintain the high standards that patients, providers and partners expect.

Critical warning signs that your strategy needs adjustment

Call volume typically drops two to three months post-launch. If an especially high call volume is observed in the first few months after product launch or if calls continue rising month over month, it may be time to reassess the strategy. External factors could be driving unexpected demand, signaling the need for extra support — whether through staffing adjustments, workflow optimizations or better self-service options — to ensure a positive experience for everyone involved. If you notice any of these key warning signs, a change in strategy may be needed.

• Increased wait times and call abandonment rates: Long wait times or frequent hang-ups indicate that staffing or processes aren’t keeping up, causing frustration and delays.
• Agent overload and rising complaints: If agents report high stress, struggle to handle inquiries efficiently, or customer satisfaction scores drop, your team may be stretched too thin.
• Surge in complex inquiries and escalations: If complex inquiries (e.g., off-label use, dosing, side effects, replacement) exceed expectations and drive escalations, agents may need specialized training to resolve them efficiently.

A phased approach to strategy change

When call surges exceed expectations, a phased approach is often the smartest way to adapt. Start by streamlining workflows, strengthening training and using technology to boost efficiency while closely tracking performance. Set clear benchmarks and reassess. If demand still outpaces capacity, expanding the team may be the next step. This approach keeps staffing decisions strategic, cost-effective, data-driven and focused on delivering quality service.

Key insights for optimizing efficiency with existing resources

Assessing call volumes to identify deflection opportunities

When evaluating incoming volume, identify simple topics that can be addressed with recorded scripts or website guidance. Filtering out routine inquiries frees agents to focus their time and expertise on complex questions that impact patient safety, treatment decisions or regulatory compliance.

Leveraging technology to expand self-service options

Leverage technology to automate repetitive tasks, freeing up agents for higher-value interactions. Strategically implemented chatbots can help manage call surges, but their success depends on thoughtful design. A well-built chatbot should have a comprehensive list of pre-programmed responses to common questions, ensuring quick and accurate answers. To strike the right balance between automation and human support, limit free-text options to specific topics or requestor types – like HCP questions or patients experiencing adverse events – so agents can intervene when needed.

Training and development programs to improve agent performance

Develop an ongoing training plan to strengthen agent skills and identify knowledge gaps that may hinder their capacity. If frequent calls on the same topics lead to escalations, targeted training may improve first-call resolution rates. Closing these gaps boosts efficiency, allowing agents to deliver accurate, high-quality support to more participants.

Using performance metrics to optimize processes

Analyze key metrics like average handle time (AHT) to identify process improvements that streamline inquiries. For example, our team simplified a complex drug replacement process that required outbound calls to another vendor. By enabling agents to generate same-day vouchers directly, we eliminated delays, reducing patient wait times from 30 days to same-day service. This improvement enhanced efficiency, improved customer experience and delivered significant value to our client.

Smart hiring, onboarding and training strategies

If, after optimizing existing resources, you still face challenges in meeting goal metrics, expanding your team may be the next step. A strategic approach to onboarding and training is essential to ensure efficiency, minimize costs, and get new agents up and running quickly, ready to handle inquiries effectively.

Cross-departmental collaboration for efficient hiring

Clear goals and deadlines between HR and operations are crucial when hiring quickly to address surge needs. Weekly check-ins with everyone involved in hiring keep the process on track. As a global operation, we maximize efficiency by conducting interviews 24 hours a day, five days a week. Based on experience, we found that moving language assessments ahead of interviews for global contact centers streamlines the hiring process, ensuring candidates meet language proficiency requirements before moving forward in the interview process.

Onboarding support program that ensures agent success

When onboarding a large number of new agents, providing support during both training and the initial phase of their independent work is essential. An initiative that has helped achieve a record-low attrition rate for our clients is a new colleague ambassador program for the first 90 days of independent work, complementing our existing ambassador program for training. New agents are paired with experienced mentors who meet weekly and are available to answer questions.

Accelerated training to get agents productive faster

When handling high inquiry volumes, it may be necessary to specialize agents by training only a portion on the specific product driving the surge. By narrowing the training curriculum to focus on key topics and creating self-guided, computer-based training to minimize the need for instructor-led classes, our team reduced training time by 22% for a client’s contact center.

Stay ahead of surging inquiry volumes with the right strategy and partner

With information moving faster than ever, predicting contact center volumes has become increasingly complex. Each product launch is unique, and patient or provider responses aren’t always easy to anticipate. A sudden spike in call volume — whether driven by unexpected popularity, off-label use or emerging safety concerns — can quickly stretch resources beyond capacity.

Partnering with an experienced medical information provider is essential in these situations. As an industry leader supporting over 150 product launches across 95 countries, the PPD™ clinical research business of Thermo Fisher Scientific brings deep industry knowledge and global resources to rapidly adjust strategies, ensuring our sponsor contact centers remain efficient and high functioning. With the right support, organizations can ensure timely, accurate communication while seamlessly managing fluctuations in inquiry volume. Whether preparing for market approval or facing high-volume needs that current contact center support can’t address, our team is ready to help.