Communication Meets Payments: Intelligent Contacts Is Empowering Businesses to See Higher Satisfaction, Better Contact Rates, Greater Responses, and Increased Revenue

Over the past few years, technology has witnessed great advancement and many industries are reaping the benefits of all the technological advancements. A/R industry and healthcare are two of the industries that are emerging at a jet speed. There was a time when some of the areas of A/R industry and healthcare billing were inefficient and full of unnecessary roadblocks and no company was willing to do anything about it.

A witty mind, Jeff Mains saw the pain points in the areas and started Intelligent Contacts in 2011. At the initial stage, the company began as a series of development projects designed to simplify and accelerate its own revenue cycle process. But later, it realized that other businesses could benefit from this technology and it started focusing exclusively on being a solutions provider which became the basis for Intelligent Contacts.

“Businesses and consumers share a common desire—they both want a frictionless experience. A business wants tools and solutions that are simple to implement and use. Consumers want their interactions with businesses to be convenient and easy,” says Jeff Mains, CEO of Intelligent Contacts. “What’s made us grow exponentially in the last two years is refining solutions that reduce friction for our clients and the customers they serve.”

Headquartered in Plano, Texas, Intelligent Contacts deliver great patient and consumer experiences through technology and it does that in communications and payments, primarily in the healthcare industry.

In-Conversation with CEO, Jeff Mains:

Q .What kind of mixed responses have you received from your clients over the years? How have they motivated you to grow the company?

Over the years, we have received amazing feedback from our clients and they are the main drivers behind the wheels of the company’s innovation and success. We at Intelligent Contacts think differently, and our solutions are unique in the marketplace and that’s one of the main reasons why people choose us. Once they begin using our communication and payment tools, they start asking questions about their business that wouldn’t have come up before and those questions often drive the next wave of innovation.

Q. Fostering a culture of feedback is crucial to the success of every organization. How is this true with your company?

At Intelligent Contacts, we have a “yes…and” philosophy. We’ve borrowed that from improv comedy, where the success of a scene depends upon allowing the conversation and action to continue. Fostering a culture of feedback is more than just providing a way to share it—it’s the willingness to learn and grow as a company from it. It has become part of  Intelligent Contacts corporate DNA.

Q .Customer service varies, but companies can still be successful. How do you maintain your clients’ trust and loyalty?

At Intelligent Contacts, we treat our clients as our business partners and that’s not a marketing slogan—it’s the reality. The more successful they are using our solutions, the more successful we are.

Unlike other providers in the industry, our growth reflects their growth. We maintain their trust and loyalty by providing the best tools for revenue recovery in the industry.

We create solutions that are frictionless for our clients and their customers and if anything isn’t working as it should, we’re responsive and accountable. As a result, our client retention rates are 98%+ year after year.

Q. About adaptability, how do you stay relevant to the consumer interests and needs in a highly competitive market?

The accounts receivable and healthcare tech industries are incredibly competitive; it’s a red ocean. And we have taken a blue ocean approach by creating tools that help our clients change the conversation. It changes with patients, with billing departments, and within healthcare organizations. Our approach is less about specific technology and more about helping our clients leverage our solutions to scale their business. That approach has led to a robust reseller and partner program. Today, some of the biggest names in the healthcare space have their logos on our technology and it doesn’t bother us one bit.

Innovation Is the Key

At Intelligent Contacts, Innovation is in the company’s DNA. One of the major innovations for the company is the introduction of real-time analytics and agent scorecards in the contact center and collection environments. The ability to gauge the effectiveness of a campaign as its happening and make technical or personnel adjustments on-the-fly was a game-changer for clients.

Intelligent Contacts’ next wave of innovation involves using this real-time data to fuel smart automation and self-learning features into its solutions. And the company believes that there is incredible potential in this area.

Another key innovation for the company was building a solutions platform that put communication and payment technology under one roof. For years, communication and payments took place through different channels. That line is forever blurred because the smartphone has merged how people communicate and pay into one device. Our business model leverages how people naturally want to interact. What can be a better consumer experience than a company that is easy to work with? Our favorite words to hear are “Wow!  That was easy.”

Looking into the future, Intelligent Contacts has an 18-month development roadmap with planned feature releases or updates every two weeks. It already has the most advanced hosted contact center solution and payment gateway in the A/R and healthcare industries, so the company’s development team takes innovation cues from leaders in other tech areas. On the client side, Intelligent Contacts analyze how users interact with its technology and anticipate improvements to its UI based on that data. On the consumer side, the company pays close attention to the changing communication and payment trends of each generation.

 “Communication is an incredibly important piece of any consumer experience and it's not just what information is being communicated, it's also when and how consumers are being contacted.”