When Derek Kannarr helped start a medical records company in 2022, he immediately chose iFive as an outsourcing partner. Why? As the saying goes, a happy customer is a repeat customer. Kannarr had worked with iFive before, and knew he wanted to collaborate with iFive again.
“iFive is a great turnkey provider,” Kannarr said. “The company has the right processes in place to hire, onboard, and keep a team going without needing a ton of involvement on my end.”
Kannarr first started working with iFive back in 2019, when he served as the operations manager at Crest SSD, a social security disability advocacy company based in Houston, Texas. Initially, Kannarr oversaw a team of in-house 25 intake specialists who called potential clients from the company office. Then, the coronavirus pandemic hit.
“That’s when we shifted to working remotely,” Kannarr said. “We realized we could monitor the team from afar, so we moved them off site. Then over time, we realized it would make more sense to move the intake team offshore.”
Kannarr decided to offshore his team for two reasons: to reduce turnover and to bring down costs. He started small, bringing on just a few iFive intake specialists. Immediately, staff turnover went down — so Kannarr decided to keep growing his iFive team. At peak, iFive supported Crest SSD with 10 intake specialists, plus a team leader.
“We went from turning over three times a year to less than once every three years,” Kannarr said. “And we saved almost 40% in labor and operations costs in comparison to onshore staffing.”
iFive also delivered from a customer service perspective. “Our intake specialists had to have a good understanding of social security laws — and of medical terms, too,” Kannarr said. “They had to be very empathetic with the clients but also be mindful of moving them along. And the iFive team members — they were very good with our clients. We saw efficiencies around 50% as it relates to key performance indicators.”
Then in early 2022, Crest SSD was sold to a larger firm, and Kannarr saw an opportunity to help launch SM Tort, a customer service and medical record retrieval company that serves mid-level mass tort firms. This new venture needed a customer service team to support their law firm clients’ goals of finding and nurturing individual clients as a part of various legal dockets. Kannarr needed a team that could adapt and build trust.
So Kannarr got in touch with iFive again. “One of the biggest problems in mass tort is losing client attention while a case makes its way through a long legal process,” Kannarr said. “So at SM Tort, we wanted to perform a different kind of customer service for law firms. With our iFive team, we’re helping firms find clients they’ve lost during the process and reengage them. Our team members are texting, emailing, calling these clients — and they’re able to be empathetic with them while still getting the information we need. We’re building long-term bonds with these clients.”
Today, iFive provides SM Tort with a team of four customer service representatives plus a team leader. “Our iFive team members have gone above and beyond. They‘ve been able to work on multiple dockets and do multiple things, providing legal assistant type duties.”
Team leaders have been especially valuable, Kannarr said. “The leads send metrics and day-end reports that are fruitful versus regurgitative, which has been crucial for operations.”
SM Tort launched less than a year ago, but Kannarr expects the business to keep growing fast, with iFive’s support.
“iFive has shown its ability to deliver. There’s never a lack of support. They’re great about reaching out and asking if there is anything else we would like to see, anything they can do to help to develop the team.”
