Startup Launches To Offer Payers an AI-Powered Contact Center Platform

TrampolineAI, an AI-powered contact center platform for health plans, launched on Thursday. It was built at Redesign Health, a healthcare innovation company.

Payers’ contact centers often deal with high call volumes and outdated systems, leading to long wait times for members. That’s what San Francisco-based TrampolineAI hopes to solve. Its platform sits on top of call centers’ infrastructure, such as phone systems. It analyzes health plan documents, claims data, member histories and live call transcripts.

By doing this, TrampolineAI is able to provide call center agents with accurate information on members during the call. It also provides agents with step-by-step guidance on how to handle calls, along with personalized recommendations customized to the member’s plan. In addition, it offers automated call summaries and real-time sentiment analysis and compliance monitoring.

Call centers are important for health insurance companies, acting as the “front door” to the business, according to Mike Bourke, CEO and co-founder of TrampolineAI. It’s the main way health plans interact with members, and they are rated based on these interactions through star ratings. However, the average first-call resolution rate is 52%, meaning about half of patients have to make several calls in order to get their issue resolved.

“Despite their best efforts and despite spending a ton of money to try to do this, they’re failing,” Bourke said in an interview. “If you’ve got to call your health insurance company, it’s pretty painful. You spend several minutes where they just try to figure out who you are and what plan you have. Then you finally get to your question, and they’re either going to transfer you over or you’re gonna have to repeat yourself or they’re gonna put you on hold for minutes at a time.”

With TrampolineAI, agents are able to spend more time connecting with the members, he added.

“When they have that human connection, and they answer the questions, they then earn the right to talk to that member about other things that really impact not only their health and wellbeing, but the overall cost for the payer as well,” Bourke said. “So things like, ‘Oh, Mike hasn’t been in to see his primary care physician for an annual checkup for four years now.’”

TrampolineAI’s services are for all health plans, including commercial, Medicare Advantage and Medicaid. It also works with third party administrators and supplemental benefits. It makes revenue through a traditional software-as-a-service model.

It has raised pre-seed funding from Redesign Health, and will be going out for a seed round in the next month, Bourke noted. The amount it’s raised is undisclosed, however.

Several other companies offer tools for call centers, including Five9 and Talkdesk. But TrampolineAI differentiates itself by focusing on healthcare and health plans.

Ultimately, by launching its platform, the company aims to “improve the overall member experience” in healthcare, Bourke said.

Picture: Yuichiro Chino, Getty Images