How VoiceAI Agents and Interaction Intelligence Transformed Patient Care at Affordable Care

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The Challenge: Scale, Quality, and a Patient Population That Deserves Better

Affordable Care began when two doctors in North Carolina saw how difficult it was for people to access tooth replacement services. Driven by the belief that everyone deserves to love their smile, they built an organization supporting 500+ affiliated dentists across 400+ nationwide practices.

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But as the organization grew, so did the complexity of serving patients well. The frontline team was fielding over 1.5 million calls annually — patients often in pain, feeling anxious or embarrassed — and the systems in place weren't keeping up. A rigid IVR handled routine calls poorly. Manual evaluations, capped at 10–15 sessions per agent per month, couldn't surface the patterns needed to improve at scale. Coaching was reactive. And there was no clear line of sight into which behaviors actually drove scheduling and attendance.

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"Having the best interactions with our customers is extremely important," said Emmanuel Noyola, Director of Patient Services. "But with our process of doing QA manually across a team of over 100 employees, we couldn't effectively track interactions and identify areas for improvement."

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Finding the Right Partner

Affordable Care had already been using Observe.AI for post-interaction analysis. When Observe.AI introduced VoiceAI Agents during a quarterly business review, the leadership team saw the opportunity to go further — not just understand calls, but automate them.

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What set Observe.AI apart from other vendors wasn't just the technology. Other solutions required costly professional services, risky wholesale IVR replacements, or delivered robotic, sluggish experiences that felt like a step backward. Observe.AI offered something different:

• Low-latency, natural conversational responses built on Foundation Models via Amazon Bedrock — using models like Claude, Nova, and Mistral
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• Flexible deployment alongside the existing IVR, not instead of it
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• AI-powered Moments, automated Evaluations, and Coaching to surface what was working across every call — not just the ones someone happened to review
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"Our leadership saw how friendly and how quick the VoiceAI Agents were responding in the live demo. There were no long pauses or robotic responses compared to other solutions we've seen. We knew it was the best option for us."

— Manny Noyola, Patient Service Director, Affordable Care

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How It Worked: Automation and Intelligence, Together

Automating the High-Volume, Low-Value Calls

The first step was identifying where automation would have the most immediate impact. Using post-interaction analytics, the team pinpointed directions calls — roughly 400 per day — as the ideal pilot. These were frequent, simple, and among the calls the frontline team found least engaging.

Affordable Care deployed its first VoiceAI Agent in just 2 weeks. The results were immediate: within the first few days, 95% of callers were handled end-to-end without escalation. That single use case alone freed up 8 hours of frontline team time per day — time that could now go toward patients who genuinely needed a human conversation.

Understanding What Drives Scheduling and Attendance

In parallel, Observe.AI's Moments capability gave the team something they'd never had before: visibility into which frontline behaviors actually moved the needle. Moments are key instances in a call — like an appointment offer, a probing question, or a paraphrase — that, measured across every interaction, reveal patterns at scale.

Paraphrasing stood out. When frontline team members reflected back a patient's concern — confirming appointment timing, acknowledging anxiety about a procedure — it consistently correlated with higher scheduling and show-up rates. The team built this insight directly into their evaluation standards and coaching programs.

"For example, an agent might typically have used paraphrasing in 50–60% of monitored calls. By demonstrating the impact of increasing this by even just 10%, we can show how it correlates with improved outcomes."

— Emmanuel Noyola, Director of Patient Services, Affordable Care

Coaching Built on Behavior, Not Metrics

The team shifted from chasing percentages to targeting specific habits. Coaching sessions were tailored to each person's improvement areas, and onboarding was redesigned around behaviors observed in top performers. The results compounded:

• Frontline team members who received refresher training saw an 80% improvement in critical performance areas
• Newly onboarded staff consistently outperformed tenured counterparts by 3–8% in scheduling rate from their first month

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With routine calls handled autonomously, the frontline team has evolved into a more consultative, patient-centered role — building rapport, reinforcing confidence, and establishing trust on behalf of 500+ affiliated dentists.

"VoiceAI Agents is going to be transformational to our business."

— Manny Noyola, Patient Service Director, Affordable Care

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Uncovering Hidden Revenue Through Insurance Insights

Observe.AI surfaced another unexpected opportunity: insurance gaps were silently costing Affordable Care appointments. By analyzing which insurers callers were requesting in specific markets, the team could act with precision. In one case, a Florida dentist wasn't credentialed with a high-demand insurer responsible for 30 calls a month. Once credentialed, her scheduling rate climbed. The team is now exploring broader network expansions based on the same data.

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What's Next

Affordable Care is already planning its next chapter with Observe.AI. On the automation side, they're expanding VoiceAI to cover additional call types and exploring outbound AI agents to reconnect with no-show patients and follow up on proposed treatments. They're also looking at Real-Time Agent Assist to support the frontline team in the moment, and ingesting clinic-level call data to extend AI-driven insights beyond the contact center.

"Our teams are already doing a great job using the platform," said Noyola. "The next step would bring even more substantial performance improvements."

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A Partnership Built to Last

What started as a search for a better IVR became something far larger — a full transformation of how Affordable Care serves patients, develops its frontline team, and drives revenue across a nationwide network of dental practices.

By combining VoiceAI Agents with automated Evaluations and behavioral coaching, Affordable Care didn't just solve two separate problems. They built a connected system where every call — handled or coached — makes the next one better.

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