Customer Success Stories from AIMA – How tenacity and teamwork pay off as AIMA physician customer receives $200k backlog payment
We’re joined by Carson Satterfield, Customer Success Manager, as we discuss her mission to help AIMA’s healthcare customers achieve success.
Tell us about a time when you helped a customer to succeed
My job is to ensure customer success and one occasion instantly comes to mind. A Colorado-based physician practice was experiencing an unexplained non-payment of claims by a large health insurance provider. Over several months, our AR team dogmatically tried to resolve the issue, making multiple calls to the insurer only to be told the claims were awaiting keying due to a backlog.
Understandably, our physician client was frustrated. Given my many years of revenue cycle management expertise, I took over the case. As always, my primary priority – to get our customers reimbursed. I make it my mission to not stop until my customer is happy.
I created a clear action plan and went about expediating each task. Firstly, I escalate the issue to a supervisor at the insurance company. Subsequently, after lengthy discussions, I convinced her to accept the claims in a claims project. After more research, I identified the underlying issue. The provider was adamant they had never received a W9, despite this being provided three times to three different people.
It was clear we needed a conversation with all invested parties present. Therefore, I arranged a video conference call with all relevant teams. Before the call, I faxed the W9 and asked for receipt confirmation during the call. With all issues seemingly resolved, our Medical Billing team resubmitted all claims electronically. We now have an internal procedure to verify claim receipt through our billing software, the insurers portal, and personal phone calls to their customer service center. A few weeks later, I am thrilled to confirm that the customer was delighted to receive their first payment from the insurer of more than $200K.
What makes a good customer success manager?
- Ability to understand your customer and their specific needs. Each audience is different. Each customer has a distinct personality. You must always know, respect, and have empathy for your audience. Being the daughter of a physician who had his own practice, I am very aware of how important it is to provide quality patient care and get paid for your hard work. I always let the customers know that I am very passionate about getting claims paid.
- Ability to listen. People can tell if you are genuinely listening or simply agreeing. Providing valuable input, suggestions, and recommendations shows you truly hear, advise, and act as an authentic business partner.
- Ability and willingness to speak up. Genuine partnerships and long-term relationships rely on honesty and participation from both sides.
What are your top tips for keeping customers happy?
- Be generous with your time to get to know each customer. Whist some issues and procedures are common for many customers, your approach and style of communication must be tailored for each person and organization. This way, trust is built and a sense of personal service.
- Add more of you. Not only is a relationship built on trust and communication, but also personality. Try to add a bit of your personality into the relationships and bring smiles, laughter, and ease to create an open path of communication and trust.
What challenges do you see for the healthcare business in the future?
Credentialing is one significant difference between physician practices and laboratories. I know all too well that insurance companies will not allow independent laboratories to become in-network providers. This creates many challenges in getting paid for services if a laboratory is out of network with the patient’s insurance. Many of our lab customers are currently only testing for COVID-19, but to sustain business revenue in the future, they will have to branch out into other types of testing. This will be a challenge and something the AIMA team will be working hard to tackle over the coming weeks, months, and years.
Learn more about Carson and book a free no-obligation consultation to discuss how she can help your healthcare business to achive greater success.
Contact Carson Satterfield
US (919) 504-9215