At HireBOB.ai we love to share stories of organisations that have embraced the capabilities of AI employees to deliver efficiency, improved customer experience and as a result creating freedom for their teams to focus on face to face service delivery.

So recently we asked Paul Standrin, Assistant Health and Wellbeing Manager at Abbeycroft for an opportunity to sit down and share his experiences following the implementation of AI employees to support Abbeycroft’s Exercise Referral Programme.

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Could you tell us a little bit about Abbeycroft and the Referral Programme that you manage?

Abbeycroft are a not-for-profit social enterprise that manage 12 facilities on behalf of West Suffolk Council and Babergh District Council.

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We deliver an award winning exercise referral scheme that supports around 1000 referral clients at any one time across multiple leisure facilities and community spaces.
This initiative is a partnership between Abbeycroft, West Suffolk NHS Foundation Trust and Allied Health Professionals Suffolk, supporting a number of healthcare facilities across the region, and it offers 12 or 24 week programmes to improve the health and wellbeing of those clients referred.

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What made you think of bringing AI into the business?

We had already been using HireBOB AI employees across the business, specifically focused on the cancellation and win back of fitness memberships. One of my colleagues Claire Turnbull had been managing that project, and we had seen great results, significant savings in time for our team, and improved commercial performance (you can read more about that case study here). Conversations started to happen internally to discuss how AI employees could be further deployed to improve other aspects of the business. It became evidently clear that AI employees had the potential to deliver significant service improvements to the Exercise Referral programme.
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What did you want AI employees to support you with?

We recognised that a large proportion of our Exercise Referral team’s time was spent processing applications, onboarding new clients and collecting data following completion. Across the programme we have 8 Health and Wellbeing Practitioners supporting the service at the various delivery locations and the limiting factor to being able to support more referral clients was the restriction on the team’s time. Within any given week our team was doing so much administrative work, that the face to face time with our client’s actually delivering exercise intervention and programming was not where we needed it to be.  We had trained exercise professionals who were spending more time at their laptop screen than on the gym floor.

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We saw a huge opportunity to utilise AI employees to reduce that administrative process, and get our people delivering face to face experiences rather than responding to emails.
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What has been the experience so far?

Starting from the beginning of the process, it was incredibly simple, we sat down with the HireBOB team to explain our programme, where we thought the blockage was in administration time, where we thought we could improve service levels for the client and the opportunities for improvement. Very quickly we had a process map of how AI employees could be supporting us day to day.

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The set up process was very quick and easy, to be honest I wasn’t sure what to expect, but the system was very user friendly easy to learn, and simple to train. Most of the set up was completed by the HireBOB team based on some documents we had provided them, so really from our end it was simple adjustments rather than training. Just like any employee, the better you make the induction process, the greater aligned they will be to the outcomes you need.
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How does the process work?

Prior to the introduction of AI employees into the Exercise Referral Programme we were delivering almost everything manually. We were being issued a referral from the GP, contacting that person via email, beginning an email chain of back and forth correspondence to gather the information, answer questions and secure an appointment for a first face to face. It was a lengthy process that could take days based on response times and the workload of our team.

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Following the completion of the 12 or 24 week programme there would then be a similar process of gathering the feedback and results data to assess the impact of the course on the client’s health and happiness. It was a significant amount of administrative time to communicate with our clients, and if we are being honest, wasn’t the most effective customer journey. Despite our best efforts, in 2023 we only captured complete end point data from between 34%-36% of clients.

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Since implementing an AI employee for sales and onboarding, which we have named Abbey, we have dramatically changed the administrative approach. As before, we are still issued a referral from our referral partners that our team triage and process, but then our team is completely freed up from the process. Our AI agent contacts the client by email, gathers the information that is required and uses an online calendar to book an appointment. Our team does not need to be involved until we greet the client face to face for their initial assessment appointment, it is a huge time saving.

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Following the completion of the programme the process is automated again, with our AI agent, named Sammy, contacting the client, gathering their feedback and arranging a convenient time for us to complete the endpoint assessment. The administrative processes delivered by our team manually is now a fraction of what it used to be.
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What have been the benefits?

When we are looking at the benefits there are two key things to focus on, obviously the benefits to us as a business, but also and perhaps more significantly the benefits to our clients.

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Looking at us a business first, the most obvious benefit is the efficiency of time saving for our team, we no longer need to be spending so much time communicating with clients during the onboarding process, instead their time is focused on programme delivery. This time saving and simplification of the processes has allowed us to increase the capacity of our programme.

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From a management perspective I also feel that I have more visibility over the programme now, with more clearly summarised information presented to me, clearer process mapping and greater consistency.

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For our clients there have been huge benefits too, we are now responding to our incoming emails within 1.35 seconds, which gives an incredibly responsive and quick service level to clients. Prior to this process, emails were responded to between appointments from our team, during office hours and as a result could have taken several days of back and forth to complete a conversation and arrange a face to face meeting.

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We also feel that our clients have a much improved onboarding and end assessment process. The AI employees can quickly answer any questions that they may have about the programme, provide all the information they need to feel confident about beginning in the first place, and take as much time as they need to review and feedback post completion. Our AI employees have the time and focus without distraction, build rapport, deliver a brilliant service level and be immediately responsive. We know that when greeting a new client for the first time face to face, they will have had a brilliant, consistent and efficient onboarding process ahead of the first time we meet them, every time.

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How are you measuring success?

From the outset there were three key measures that we intended to measure success by, the first being improved efficiency for our processes and team, we wanted to free our people up to do the things that they are good at. The second being the service delivery for our clients, we want them to have an excellent service level. The third being an increased membership upsell at the end of their programme to graduate onto a longer term fitness membership following the 12 or 24 week free period.

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It’s early days in our measurement of success, but instantly we were able to tell that it is making an impact, our people have more capacity to deliver face to face appointments, our clients are rating their conversations with Abbey and Sammy (our AI employees) 5 out of 5 stars, and we are collecting more end point assessment data than we ever have before.

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Early signs say that this has significantly enhanced our client experience and given us the capability of delivering a brilliant programme to more of our local community. Week by week we are watching the stats increasing on our HireBOB management dashboard, so we are very excited to see where the future heads.

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