Ep. 75: Business Outcomes and Quality are Tied to 3 Things: Processes, Tools and People

Miriam Allred (00:09):

They wanna introduce our guest today. We have Tatyana Zlotsky from A Place for Mom. She’s the Chief Customer Officer and General Manager. She really owns the customer experience at A Place for Mom. Tatyana, thanks for joining me today.

Tatyana Zlotsky (00:25):

Thank you for having me, Miriam! I’m really excited to be here with this group.

Miriam Allred (00:28):

Likewise, a lot has changed and evolved there at A Place for Mom. So before we get started, you know, that’s really why I want to dive in. You know, I think a lot of people here a place and they think of the service that helps families in senior living communities. But tell us a little bit about your evolution to the home care market.

Tatyana Zlotsky (00:49):

Yeah, it’s a great question. And you know, we’ve really, we have been certainly transforming the business over the last two to three years. And so with home care, you know, like many other decisions, we, we really start and end with a customer customer at the table and customer centricity as the core insight for how do we make business decisions. And so taking a quick step back, our mission at a place for mom is to enable caregivers family caregivers, to make the best decisions for their senior loved ones. And those decisions, you know, can come in many different forms. And historically it’s been around finding the right care types for senior living, as you mentioned. But what we learned really quickly is there’s an opportunity to help advise them across many other areas. And specifically for home care, there was a really growing need and demand to offer that as a service.

Tatyana Zlotsky (01:45):

And we saw that in a couple of different ways, both home care as a permanent solution for folks that just didn’t feel comfortable with senior living. And then many times as a complimentary solution or maybe more of a near term before, prior to senior living. And so in 2018 we acquired aging care, which was a, a business really focused on home care and maybe another brand that that’s familiar to folks. And we’ve been growing it ever since. And I think a really amazing thing happened about two years ago where home care just really took off. There was a lot of sort of I think political narrative around it, a huge growing customer demand. And so we’ve been making really meaningful investments in this space hired a new leadership team to really head up that business and are excited to just continue learning more about it.

Miriam Allred (02:35):

Awesome. Thanks for that context. What an exciting time you all are in this unique position where you work with providers across the, so you see not only what’s happening in home care, but what’s happening in what I call sister industries or people that are, you know, in the postacute space. So what are some unique trends that you all have seen in the industry and how are those influencing both the families and the providers?

Tatyana Zlotsky (03:02):

Sure. Yeah, it’s a great question. I think there are a couple of things first off on the family caregiver side, you know, who’s really at the, yeah. At the core of the process. There’s a huge sense of being overwhelmed and care or fatigue. That’s really pervasive. And I think it, it, it really took a turn for the worst during COVID because you know, folks were not as comfortable getting outside help into the home. And I think really held back as a result. And what we saw is they really sacrificed their own mental and physical health. And so just some stats on surveys that we send out to some of our caregivers, we saw in a recent survey that 77% of family caregivers felt overwhelmed. 65% of them reported sacrificing their own health needs in order to support their senior loved ones.

Tatyana Zlotsky (03:56):

And I think this is, you know, we’re gonna see a long tail of this one over the next coming years. And so you know, personally, I I’m a, a caregiver to to my grandparents who are both 91 and actually one of them is, is in a community right now. And the other one is getting pretty full-time home care support at home. And so, you know, I know personally how difficult this is and, and I think one of the things I really feel passionate about is helping to remove any stigma associated with getting help for caregivers. You know, I think it’s it, it’s actually so important that we spread that message because only with proper help, can we improve outcomes of our seniors? And so this is, this has been really at the center of many of our conversations and what that means for our business specifically is that it’s really incumbent upon us to ease the journey and help those folks navigate different care options, provide industry expertise, you know, really help them differentiate different types of services that might be out out there for them, and then ultimately empower them to make the right decision for their family.

Tatyana Zlotsky (05:07):

A second major trend, you know, I think won’t surprise anyone and probably be really important to this group is caregiver, professional caregiver shortage in the workforce. You know, I think this has been something that’s hit all industries but is really profound in home care. So just to quote a couple of stats on this one you know, the national association of home and hospice care reported that agencies are canceling as much as 20% of their billable hours due to staffing shortages. The home health care news reported that 70% of agencies are turning away clients due to staffing shortages. And of course you found in your most recent benchmarking survey that wage increases for caregivers, outpatient inflation. And so 94% of agencies have increased pay to attract caregivers. So we’re short on folks to do the jobs and therefore we have to pay them a lot more and, and it makes it makes it really difficult to run our business.

Tatyana Zlotsky (06:07):

And so you know, we’ve actually launched a new product to help our agencies with this and with, to help sort professional caregivers, really well, vetted professional caregivers and were getting a lot of demand for, for what was really just a pilot product. And I would say the third important trend is technology. Of course, this is not a surprise technology, you know has disrupted everything. It’s completely change the way consumers live their lives. And so if you think about that family under distress, trying to take care of multiple loved ones they’re very short on time. And at the same time they expect companies that they work with to provide a personalized experience. And so that means, you know, real time and seamless conversations, connectivity, which goes beyond traditional phone calls and, and web forms. I think so things like being able to reach out via SMS inquire have a non-linear conversation that’s then maybe followed by a phone call and a consult and an input, right?

Tatyana Zlotsky (07:19):

So just all of that being, being fully integrated and, and hearing someone else on the other line that understands your specific needs and is able to unpack them and translate them into valuable service. And so what that means on the provider side, I think a, of our agency customers are feeling the pressure to meet these growing demands. And so we’re starting to, to see leaders, you know, connecting the dots on the fact that if they can combine technology and data, they can really be better suited to serve these, these growing needs. So anything from, you know, RM systems are a big topic of discussion, enabling SMS and text messaging, omnichannel communication with customers and, and a lot of it through API integration so that they can really see a seamless experience on their end is what we’ve been hearing. So those would be the top three trends,

Miriam Allred (08:19):

Great information. There’s a lot to unpack here, but I think where I wanna start is outcomes. There’s been so much attention shown on home care the last two years that, you know, we have to prove ourselves, and it’s really cool that your organization, you know, is involved in, in the continuum. And so you see, you know, or home home care can be plugged in or substituted or, you know, supplement other types of care. And so I wanna talk about the importance that outcomes have on the long term success for a business. What would you add there about just the importance of outcomes in measuring those?

Tatyana Zlotsky (08:58):

Yeah, I think it’s such a, it’s such a great question. And, you know, I think outcomes are often related to quality too, and like the idea of quality. So, you know, I think if you Google quality first, so like as just like a big, basic definition, there are sort of two, two definitions that come up, right? So the first one is the degree of excellence that you do something right, and this is really mother and apple pie. You want your service to be highly valuable to your customers. You want it to feel like it’s high quality. But the second piece of the definition, which I think is more interesting is is the distinctive attribute or characteristic possess by this service or by this something. And so this is where I think companies get to decide what is their unique quality differentiator and therefore, what are the outcomes that you want to drive as an organization to deliver this quality?

Tatyana Zlotsky (10:01):

So I’ll give you a, a real life example, you know, cuz this gets pretty complicated. And it really comes down to, I think like volume over quality a lot of times. So I was doing a team review, I think just last for and we were looking at trends and we saw that actually total leads were decreasing, a volume were increasing a volume, but the number of past leads that we were sending to our agency customers were not, were not increasing at the same rate. And so naturally, you know, being the general manager that I am, I said, well, all why in this metric moving in the same direction. And so the team explained that we had added a couple of important fields to our vetting process of qualification of families before we go ahead and send them off to our agencies.

Tatyana Zlotsky (10:53):

And so you know, I sort of, you know, customer centricity, the religion that I, that I live and die by. So this was a very easy decision for me. But I think sometimes it can be complicated for folks, you know, sometimes you have to have near term pain to get to the long term goal. And, and so I think what I would say for agencies is you know, you wanna set your goals based on your values and your mission of your company. And then the outcomes that you think support and drive that. And then you really have to be able to communicate that to your people so that they have the right lens under which they operate. So if you’re looking for clients you know that one more than 20 hours on a week, okay, well let’s, are we gonna forgo all the other clients? Are we gonna solely focus on this? What differentiates these clients? How do we go out and find them? And then what is the service that they will perceive to be of high quality that we can really deliver? So I don’t know, is that helpful? Does that make sense?

Miriam Allred (11:54):

Yeah. I love that you brought that full circle because I love where you started with quality in conjunction with your unique, you know, what, what is your unique and your differentiator and how can you, you know, spin that to be, you know, your offering that’s of highest quality and of highest value to your customers. So I love, you know, where you brought that full circle to, in genial to this, I wanna talk about what you were saying with technology. There’s a lot of room for growth in technology in this industry. And I think a lot of providers have a pretty extensive tech stack. You know, you mentioned like their CRM or their scheduling software, a but now a lot of providers have an ATS or, you know, a lead generation software. There’s, there’s a lot of tools that are evolving in this space. And really there’s no silver bullet or there’s no, you know, cookie cutter use of technology right now, but what would you recommend that providers do to objectively measure and the tools and the strategies that they’re using with their tech stack?

Tatyana Zlotsky (12:58):

Yeah, it’s such a good question. I really reject the idea of silver bullet and you know, shiny objects because I think you can really lose the forest and the trees there. You can, you can go down a path of chasing what other people may perceive to be a great tool. And so I think, again, this goes back to really being true to who you are and, and your customers and what their needs are. So I’ll offer kind of a framework for this. I think it’s really around process tools and people. So I think it starts, and this directly ties to outcomes and qualities. So, you know, to it, to deliver on the outcomes of the quality that you’re looking for, what is your internal company process? How do you execute? How do you get people in, how do you get people service?

Tatyana Zlotsky (13:44):

How do you retain your customers? What is, what is your entire agency process, right. And sort of defining that and understanding the key tension points there. And then the second piece is, okay, well, what tools do we need to enable that process to be best of class? And so sure CRMs come up as a, as a big topic. And I think, you know, CR CRM systems have been around for a long time. I think SaaS disrupted the entire CRM space. And there’s so many different options now, so many providers, but again, the, the key to me is not to get distracted by the, by the shiny object. It’s about mapping. What are the key things that you are trying to enable for your business and what features and functionality does each of these tools possess in order for you to be successful?

Tatyana Zlotsky (14:33):

And then the other piece I would layer to that is I think the partnership, I don’t even like calling people, vendors, they’re really partners, right? So the partner that’s gonna service the CRM for you provide this, you know, are they gonna show up if the whole thing crashes and you can’t, you can’t run your business. Do you feel like there’s trust on both sides? Do they understand it? Do they believe in the mission that your company stands for? So I think that’s really important. And then lastly, but really critically is just the people, right? So your organization is probably the single most important differentiated tool in how you can bring quality. I mean, folks going to other people’s physical homes, you know, it’s like an extension of their family. Like this is the most important thing. So it’s, it’s understanding how do we make those people successful?

Tatyana Zlotsky (15:22):

How do we communicate to them? You know, what’s the right service and quality to be delivered to the families. And then how do we get feedback from the people that are with the senior loved ones, they will be the ones to tell you what’s missing. They’ll be the ones to tell you what’s broken with the process. So it’s, it’s really just a great opportunity to get insights back into the organization. But again, there are trade offs to be made here, right? So I’ll give you just another one, you know, life real life example for us, we have the ability to conference in providers families to providers, while we have them on the phone, like a warm transfer, this has huge benefit, you know, up to three X increase in conversion, but they have to change their process a lot of times in order to take those calls from us. So, you know, how much are you willing to stretch, which types of customers to deliver the best quality of service is kind of is, is the framework that I would offer to assess this.

Miriam Allred (16:22):

Yeah. I love that. I wanna highlight one thing that you said about getting feedback on your tech. An example just came to mind, we’re working with you know, a large franchise net work with their corporate team to survey all of their schedulers about the software that they’re using. I think it’s really easy as a, as a business owner to understand high level what the software is doing and the capabilities and the features, but then you think, you know, a few runs down all of your schedulers using that tool every single day, you know, are they having a pleasant experience with a it, or are they not? I think it’s great to ask your team that’s in and out of your tech stack every single day, how they feel about the tools and about their day to day operations that are impacted by those tools. And I think you did a good job of, of highlighting just the importance that your people play, that your technology plays, but then how those two play together and, and how that drives the business forward.

Tatyana Zlotsky (17:17):

Well, exactly. I think sometimes it’s really hard to get to your core, like final customer, right? So whether that’s the family caregiver or the senior, you know, a lot of times it’s really hard to get that information directly and it’s expensive sometimes, but I think your, your field teams, folks that are in the field with the families is the next best thing. And so they, and I, my experience is that they’re not shy. And they will tell you exactly what they’re missing and kind of what you could do to make their lives easier.

Miriam Allred (17:47):

Absolutely. So there’s a lot of data and insights that you all are providing to your clients in, in this space. Talk to me about how you’ve seen those agencies leverage that data and how it’s impacting the outcomes for the providers and for the families.

Tatyana Zlotsky (18:05):

Yeah, I mean, I think for us extending this idea of quality service with the agencies that we work with is really critical. And so our efforts over the past years, couple years have been focused on, on driving this, this quality outcome. We’ve been piloting a number of initiatives and monitoring the impact they’re making to ensure that we’re moving in their, in, in the right direction. So a few examples we implemented specialized training for advisors. That’s focused on memory care and, and, and dementia diagnoses, right? So this is a huge part of our business. It’s really a segment of families that require very specific type of care. And what we found is, you know, not, not all of our advisors really understood how to unpack those needs. And what’s really challenging about memories. Often the families are not even fully aware of what’s happening with the senior loved ones.

Tatyana Zlotsky (19:05):

You have to really ask the right probing questions to, to unpack the situation. And so we could inducted a lot of research and, and then built specific training for this group. And what we saw was a 30% increase in conversion with the actual advisors that went through this training. So that was, you know, that was one one example, we also implement provider education and regular referral reviews with accounts. And so, you know, James and team have done a great job with this. You, you know, we get on a call with some of our agencies and they’ll say, oh, like our overall conversion rate is not great and we’ll say, great. Like we, we’ve done some analysis working with your teams. And, you know, if you look at all of your different all of your different franchises, actually, you’ve got three that have this amazing conversion rate.

Tatyana Zlotsky (19:58):

And then you’ve got these 10 that doesn’t seem like they’re actually following up with the leads at all. So, you know, let’s get behind the averages, let’s get behind the mean and really try to understand, okay, where are the pockets of six success? And then how do we replicate this awesome model that you have with the three agents? Are we not doing a good job servicing the other 10? Or, you know, what can we do, maybe our, you know, sometimes we’ve literally have found that like the data wasn’t even making its way over to some of these folks. So so kind of diving into some of these with them was really helpful. And then I think the, the last one going back to the texting example is texting, is something we introduced across our business over the last six months. And we’re finding a lot of engagement increases for folks that really wanna prefer this me method. And, and, and I think a lot of the use cases are people are coming outta rehabs or hospitals, or they’re at work. They can’t pick up the phone, they can’t talk to folks, but they have sort of downtime, you know, to be texting and asking a lot of questions. And so we saw as much as 21% engagement lift for are the folks that we were talking with a cross channel that included text message besides phones. So those are just some examples.

Miriam Allred (21:14):

Awesome. No, those were great. I I’ve asked you a lot of questions and you’re doing a fantastic job at responding. I wanna pause here and open it up. Lori, James, anything that you’d add to what’s been said far?

James (21:27):

I mean, I think the, the recent, there was the last point that Tatyana made was, has been one of the most impactful. And just like the, the combination of data, the focus on quality, all in the pursuit of outcomes, like we’ve been seeing that resonate significantly with the customers we’ve been working with. And a lot times, like, I think the, the, the phrase of getting under the mean, and getting under those averages is so critical because that’s where, like it’s all coming to life and we can see that, oh, like, like liket said, there may just be a breakdown in the process on one side or the other, but when we work collaboratively to actually uncover that and address it, then we actually form this really strong, like working relationship that helps us get at that helps the agencies. We work with, get the most out of what we’re providing, and then more importantly, like the families find care. And so we’re all doing best by the families. And that’s been one of the strongest things and really resonates, I think, with us, with the customers, with the family, and it’s a, a win, win, win, and that’s been really powerful to see. And so just continuing to build on that where the data enables all of these higher order things is really, really exciting to see

Miriam Allred (22:31):

You shared a few examples, but other ways that providers have leveraged this data and these services that you’re offering to drive growth, you know, James is just talking about kind of the end goal of how you help providers and help help them achieve that end goal. Any other examples of ways or, or a provider that, you know, came to you and really needed help and kind of where that led to any other examples. Yeah,

Tatyana Zlotsky (22:56):

Sure. So we do, we have a couple of processes to really help to help our agency customers. So one is conducting lead reviews. So because we are focus strong quality, and by the way, that quality prefers to you, we wanna send vetted humans. That’s, you know, I always talk about humans to our two agencies and that could either be family humans or professional caregiver humans. So part of that is based on us assessing and what are the right questions and inputs we need in order to drive the right conversions from a math perspective, but other pieces are qualitative and we really need to learn from our agencies. So we do lead reviews where we actually follow up both with the families and with the agencies. And we actually talk through like what went right and what went wrong. And we try to unpack, you know, how we can improve our lead qualification process and better match.

Tatyana Zlotsky (23:57):

You know, it’s almost, it’s a matching service in many ways, right? How do you get the right family to the right agency? So that’s one from just a partnership perspective. We do quarterly business reviews with all of our agencies, and here’s where, you know, I think the team really leans in, we, we try to work ahead of time to get a lot of the data collected so that we can really bring some meaningful insights to the table. Right? Our goal is to demonstrate something that perhaps is difficult for them to see within their own business. And so that’s either because we’re analyzing with a different lens or often it’s because we just happen to have a broader vantage point sitting across the industry, as you mentioned. So we can do lots of interesting benchmarking and we can sort of bring different industry data puts into this.

Tatyana Zlotsky (24:46):

So those conversations have been really engaging and really meaningful. And then I think going back to, you know, the listening part. So we we do a lot of conversations with agencies to say, you know, give us feedback. We’re a huge feedback organization, more broadly feedback to our employees, feedback, to getting feedback from our customers. It’s really a culture of, of growing and improving by being able to have candid conversations with each other. So we, we really encourage that direct dialogue from our agencies. And again, I think if you ask, you shall receive, so you have to be ready to to do something about it. We can do that. But it’s been great. It’s really helped us grow. I think some of our most challenging agencies have led us to make the most interesting and important decisions about improving the quality of our service. And so we’re really super grateful for that.

Miriam Allred (25:38):

I’m just thinking of, you know, our benchmarking report. That’s coming out here in just a few weeks. There will be a lot of data around sales and marketing and around the lead sources and where things are coming from. And then, you know, there’s experts like yourself that can help you unpack that data. You know, how do we refine our processes to convert more leads? How do we optimize our funnel? Y the data needs to then, you know, there needs to be action taken behind the data, and you guys are perfectly equipped to help, you know, an agency understand where those referrals are coming from, how to convert more of them, how to optimize the process and, and providers aren’t alone. They need support. There’s like we were talking about before, a lot of people have come to this business with a clinical background or a nursing background and the business and the processes behind the scenes can be overwhelming. And so I love what you said about just partnering. There’s a lot of great people in this space to help partner to walk you through some of those tools and resources available to them. So maybe we’ll kind of cap here, I think yourself, Tatiana or James, wanna chime in and talk a little bit about where people can learn more information about you all and get in contact with you.

Tatyana Zlotsky (26:47):

Absolutely. I mean, I’ll, I’ll start and I’ll hand it over to James to wrap it up, I think, you know, just closing out on, on what you, on the spirit of what you just said. A place for mom is a brand that’s for all of ages Z. Our job is to raise awareness of the category and we take our responsibility to create demand for the industry and a, a perception of high quality trust, authenticity, very seriously. And that’s what really we’re really committed to. And so we want to be a partner to folks. We, our agencies are our customers, and so we take those relationships very seriously and we want to be a source of demand. That’s both reflective of the quality that they expect, and also at the right ROI, that’s, you know, very comparable. And I would argue in many instances superior to what a small shop particularly can generate for themselves.

Tatyana Zlotsky (27:55):

And so it’s very much to be complimentary to help fuel their growth, their helping families. We, our goal is to help more families that’s our entire and vision. So we couldn’t feel more passionate about making all of you successful and, you know, whenever those things don’t add up, please tell us. And, and that’s when, you know, we’ll look internally and make the changes we need to do in order to evolve. But specifically, James, maybe you could just cite some specific resources. And I know we have a, an new website that folks go to as well.

James (28:27):

Yeah, absolutely. So for anyone who’s interested that you can come to a place for mom.com or agent care.com. Satana mentioned, we have a couple brands within, within the broader portfolio. But then more specifically when working with us everyone have a customer success manager who will be sort of the point of contact who can help with a lot of what we talked about today. The lead review is helping to make sure you’re getting the most out of what we can, the, the families that we can send. And so there’s a, there’s a strong relationship there between your agency and a place for mom, someone who’s on the ground there with you you know, making sure that that the, the relationship is being productive and generating that ROI. I can send some of this in the chat. I think we’ll, we’ll post in the notes separately, but for anyone who’s currently working with a place for mom, if there’s anything that we’ve talked about that you haven’t taken advantage of, or, or you want more information on you can email [email protected] and for anyone who hasn’t worked with us in the past and is interested and wanted to learn, wants to learn more.

James (29:26):

You can email new [email protected]. We’ll also provide some phone numbers with those in the notes if you prefer to just call in. But yeah, I think, I think to what Tatyana said, like it all, for us, it all starts with the mission. We’re laser focused on that and the outcomes and the quality and the data and everything that we do aligns behind that. And that’s where we feel like we can do best by the families do best by the agencies that we work with. And we’re really excited to, to do more along those lines.

Miriam Allred (29:52):

Fantastic. Tatyana, James, A Place for Mom and the whole team there. Thank you so much for making this happen and for being here live and to all of you tuning in now and in the future, you know, thanks for listening in and supporting us and we’ll look forward to seeing you all next week.