Aeroflow Customer Service — Expert Operational Guide

Contents

1 Aeroflow Customer Service — Expert Operational Guide

Overview and purpose

Aeroflow customer service must balance high-touch support for clinical products with fast, transactional help for consumables and parts. The maturity goal is to handle 80–95% of inbound contacts through a unified customer experience (CX) across phone, secure portal, chat, and email while preserving compliant handling of protected health information (PHI). In practice this means documented workflows, audit trails, and measurable SLAs by channel.

This guide assumes Aeroflow-style operations: multi-channel fulfillment, insurance/billing interactions, warranty-managed hardware, and recurring consumables. The outcome should be a deterministic contact-flow that reduces average handle time (AHT) while improving first-contact resolution (FCR) and Net Promoter Score (NPS), with explicit metrics and playbooks for each use case.

Contact channels, routing and SLAs

Design channels to serve specific intents. Typical channel mapping is: phone for urgent clinical or delivery issues, secure portal for PHI and order history, chat for order status and product questions, and email for non-urgent documentation. An IVR should triage to these buckets in under 30 seconds of caller time; target live-answer rate for priority lines is 80% within 30 seconds during business hours.

Recommended SLA targets by channel: phone (answer <30s, resolution on call 70–85%), chat (initial response <60s, resolution in 1–2 messages), secure portal (acknowledge within 4 business hours, resolve within 24–72 hours), email (acknowledge within 8 business hours, resolve within 24–72 hours). For time-sensitive clinical escalations, define a 1-hour escalation SLA and a 24/7 duty rota.

Channels and best-practice routing: Phone (priority clinical + logistics), Secure portal (PHI, attachments), Chat (order status and basic troubleshooting), Email (paperwork, billing disputes), SMS (ETA and simple alerts). Include callback scheduling to keep abandonment <5%.

Key KPIs and reporting cadence

Measure both experience and efficiency. Core KPIs: First Contact Resolution (FCR), Customer Satisfaction (CSAT), NPS, Average Handle Time (AHT), Service Level (SLA) attainment, abandonment rate, and repeat contacts per case. Track these at agent, team, and product-line level and review weekly, with monthly trend analysis to detect policy or product regressions.

Industry targets to aim for (adjust to your baseline): FCR 85–92%, CSAT ≥90% or 4.5/5, NPS 30–60, AHT 4–8 minutes for phone, abandonment <5%, escalation rate <10% of contacts. Report breakouts by channel, by reason code (billing, delivery, warranty, clinical), and by resolution disposition. Use rolling 13-week windows for trend smoothing and predictive staffing.

KPIs with measurement specifics: FCR measured from single-case closure vs. follow-up within 30 days; CSAT after case closure via 1–2 question survey; AHT includes wrap-up work and system updates; SLA attainment calculated hourly for call centers and daily for portal responses.

Operational playbooks, scripts and templates

Create concise playbooks for the top 10–15 contact reasons (e.g., order status, device troubleshooting, replacement part, warranty claim, insurance verification, returns). Each playbook should include: required data points to collect (order number, date of birth, account ID), verification script for identifying the customer, step-by-step resolution flow, and escalation path with names/roles and SLAs. Keep each playbook to 1–2 pages for speed of use.

Sample phone opening (30 seconds): “Hello, thank you for calling Aeroflow Support. My name is [Agent]. Can I have your account number or the order number to locate your file? For your protection, I’ll verify [two identifiers]. Are you calling about billing, delivery, warranty, or device support?” For email and portal, use templated subject lines like “Order #12345 — Delivery ETA/Action Required” and attach checklists for forms to be returned.

Maintain a library of canned responses for chat and email but require agents to personalize with the customer’s name and specific order data. Automate order-tracking links in every outbound notification; include expected dates (e.g., “Shipped: 2025-06-10; Delivery ETA: 2025-06-12–2025-06-14”) to reduce inbound status calls.

Returns, warranty, billing and insurance workflows

Clearly separate warranty and return flows. Typical parameters: standard return window 30 days for non-defective consumables, restocking fee 0–20% depending on product; manufacturer warranties commonly 1–5 years. For defective device claims, require photo/video and a completed RMA form; set target RMA decision within 3 business days and replacement shipment within 1–3 business days after approval.

Handling insurance/billing requires documented medical necessity and claims support. Typical insurance verification lead time is 2–7 business days; appeals/resubmissions may take 30–90 days depending on payer. Provide a billing packet with every order that contains CPT/HCPCS codes, physician documentation checklist, and a recommended timeline (verify eligibility on day 0, submit claim within 3 days of shipment). Refunds should be processed back to the original payment method within 7–10 business days of approval, with clear disclosure of any partial-authorized deductions.

Staffing, training and technology stack

Staff to expected contact volume: a rule of thumb is 1 FTE per 250–500 active customers for a mixed-service operation, adjusted for contact rates (e.g., 10–25 contacts per 1,000 orders per day). Cross-train agents on billing and clinical triage to reduce escalations. Implement quarterly skills refreshers and a documented QA program scoring calls on verification, empathy, accuracy, and compliance.

Technology essentials: CRM with full order history and ticketing, an IVR with skill-based routing, secure portal with 256-bit encryption for PHI, EHR/EMR integration where relevant, analytics that deliver real-time dashboards and workforce management for shrinkage and forecasting. Consider conversational AI for low-value queries (order status) but preserve human handoff for clinical and billing exceptions.

Closing checklist and next steps

To operationalize this guide: map your current contact categories, establish baseline metrics for the KPIs listed above, build the top 10 playbooks and train a pilot team, and implement the secure portal for PHI-sensitive workflows. Run a 90-day test with weekly KPI reviews and adjust staffing and scripts based on root-cause analysis of repeat contacts.

Deliverables after 90 days should include: documented SLAs and escalation ladder, six core playbooks, integrated CRM + portal, and a staffing plan aligned to forecasted volumes. These concrete steps will convert Aeroflow customer service operations into a measurable, compliant, and customer-centric function that reduces cycles, costs, and clinical risk.