ARA Diagnostic Imaging Case Study

The Organization 

ARA Diagnostic Imaging has been providing quality imaging services to the people of Austin and Central Texas since 1954. ARA has over 115 radiologists with multiple subspecialties and 17 outpatient imaging centers including specialized diagnostic imaging centers including women’s imaging centers and a children’s imaging center. Their contact center, of which 96% of agents work remotely, schedules appointments using inbound, outbound and omnichannel solutions. 

Motivation for Change 

An ARA agent’s effectiveness is measured across the spectrum of efficiency and service level KPIs. ARA has a long history of leveraging the power of rewards and incentives to impact those agent performance KPIs; however, they were having difficulty scaling and measuring the ROI of those rewards. ARA’s existing gamification system required exhaustive manual calculations for quarterly results, reward timing was too far removed from the action to be meaningful to agents and manual fulfillment was inefficient. ARA was losing more than 80 management hours quarterly in order to properly track, communicate, fulfill and calculate agent incentives. 

Desired Solution 

ARA was looking for a way to better incentivize agents in a timely manner with a more automated, less manual process. Additionally, they wanted a solution to better engage employees and reduce absenteeism. In fact, research from Gallup show engaged employees have a 37% lower rate of absence. 

Why Alvaria 

Alvaria Motivate™ is designed to increase productivity and reduce employee turnover across all generations – from Boomers and Millennials to the fast-growing Gen-Z workforce. Whether employees are motivated most by incentives or recognition, competition or collaboration, Alvaria Motivate transforms daily routines into rewarding rivalries that give everyone a reason to do their best. 

Alvaria Motivate offers five pillars: 

• Gamification: incentivize employees with recognition, awards, score cards, leveling up and the ability to have competitions and engagement 

• Coaching: engage supervisors with the information they need to coach their team, see immediate impacts and reward them for a job well done 

• GLMS: easily upload content for gamified learning, surveys and quizzes 

• Easy Rewards: Turn spendable points into real world gift cards that are meaningful to your employees with 100’s to choose from, all on the same platform 

• Mobile App: Access the dashboard, friends’ profiles, leaderboards, awards, competitions and redeem points from anywhere 

The Alvaria Solution 

The Alvaria solution targeted persistent performance change by incorporating dynamic reward and redemption game construction. However, the Alvaria team also went further. In collaboration with the ARA Team, Alvaria isolated agent, supervisor and manager focus on performance goals by unifying engagement, launching robust gamification and focusing on accelerating aptitude with skill development. ARA’s management made the astute decision to identify an internal Game Master who was their “ROI Caretaker.” 

The Game Master easily tracked progress toward company goals through scorecards. When progress was not trending toward goal success, they leveraged the optimal game mechanic on the right agent or groups at the right time. ARA also utilized the robust collection of redemption features within Alvaria Motivate. Raffles, auctions and the Alvaria Motivate platform’s Bling Bazaar were leveraged, lining up to what their agents valued to ensure maximum emotional engagement. And built-in randomness was employed, ensuring rewards were distributed fairly. ARA also doubled down on highlighting individual and group achievement. Utilizing peer recognition to highlight performance improvement was used a catalyst for achievement, targeting the middle 60% of their agents. 

The Results 

The results were profound: Alvaria Motivate helped ARA achieve a 33% decrease in after-call work, a 25% decrease in customer hold times, a 5% increase in active working percentage, a 5% increase in calls per day and $1,000 a day in efficiency savings. In addition, after deploying Alvaria Motivate absenteeism dropped from 25% to 10%, resulting in a savings of $67,500.