CRO’s entrust their mission critical worldwide telecommunications to one of a few global companies. There are a plethora of complex issues looming for any company that relies on worldwide telephone numbers and IVR platform installations. These issues negatively impact ROI, medical issue notifications, patient reporting, corporate image and revenues. Avoiding them at all costs is essential.

Setting up worldwide telephone numbers and IVR platforms is complicated and costly. They are the patients, staff and doctors life lines. Being 100% sure that they are operational is literally life and death, not only for the clinical trial, but also for the business’ bottom line.

A Garter Survey showed 85% of customers are dissatisfied with their telecommunications experience with 92% of all customer interactions occurring via telephone. 
When new worldwide telephone numbers and IVR platforms are delivered to CRO’s, they are tested randomly by the provider or their local in-country telco partner. However, they are not verifying all numbers being delivered, and the testing is rudimentary. These companies solely and sporadically test electronically, which permits problematic and/or non-functioning numbers and IVR platforms to be delivered to customers. This testing does not detect any in-country quality of service (QoS) issues and does not simulate the in-country user experience.

It is because of the flawed limited relationships between telecom providers and their in-country local telco partners that CROs are losing customers, compromising clinical trials, and jeopardizing revenues because newly delivered worldwide telephone numbers and IVR platforms are faulty. Doctors, patients, and staff calling with question, issues, or reporting, cannot due to problematic telephone numbers and IVR platforms. The time and money spent to fix faulty worldwide telecommunications is costly and frustrating, but more importantly, negatively affects how a company is perceived in the marketplace, customer experience, and revenues.

According to Global Telecom Testing’s 2015 Pass/Fail Report of Worldwide Telephone Numbers, more than 30% of worldwide telephone numbers and IVR platforms tested are non-operational upon delivery to global businesses, even though the telecom providers and/or their local in-country telco partner have stated otherwise. The risk of relying on these companies to ensure that worldwide clinical trials phone numbers are operational is much like playing Russian roulette with your business’ lifelines.

For CROs whose day-to-day business operations depends on successful patient/doctor communications and worldwide collaboration, it is crucial for revenue and ROI that their worldwide telephone numbers and IVR platforms are fully operational, and can deliver consistent, robust, and positive results.

In-country quality assurance testing of the telephone numbers and IVR platforms before usage is the only way to ensure revenues are protected. Completed calls and the in-country caller experience needs to be the priority; not the cost of testing – you get what you pay for.

The first step to fixing problems is discovering them. In order to 100% verify that worldwide clinical trial telephone numbers and IVR platforms are operational in any worldwide city, in-country, live, landline and mobile test calls must be performed in those cities/locations. This type of testing identifies problems before doctors, staff, and patients begin using the numbers and IVR platforms, which protects revenues and ROI.

Live testing locates any non-operational telephone numbers and IVR platforms. Testing ensures that they are problem-free:  the message, language and dialect, voice and DTMF prompts, and operators answering calls are all functioning properly. The reliability of worldwide clinical trial telephone numbers and IVR platforms are enhanced, which in turn drives revenues, ROI, successful trials, and customer satisfaction.

In-country, live testing is the most important testing benchmark because only this type of testing accurately simulates the in-country user experience and provides compliance support to the clinical trial.

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Stephen Levenson

Stephen Levenson is the vice president of Ft. Lauderdale, FL-based Global Telecom Testing (GTT), which was founded in 2007 to address the lack of worldwide in-country live telephone number and IVR platform quality assurance testing for global companies. For more information contact GTT at 954.358.6292, www.globaltelecomtesting.com, or steve@globaltelecomtesting.com.