A low-resolution view of care
Jessica is on her lunch break, sitting in her car and trying to call Southwest Medical Imaging (SMIL) to cancel an MRI. She was referred for the scan last week, but her doctor rescheduled her follow-up and now the timing no longer works. She dials in, but the line is busy. By the time someone picks up, she’s already five minutes late getting back to work.
Before Replicant, this was a familiar experience for patients like Jessica. Hold times were long, especially during peak scheduling windows. Even simple requests like canceling or confirming an appointment required agent assistance, often pulling staff away from more complex or time-sensitive needs. For patients, that meant delays. For agents, it meant burnout.
Kim Wyszynski, Director of the Contact Center at SMIL, saw it happening across the board. Appointment-related calls made up the bulk of the queue, and her team was stretched thin trying to balance repetitive administrative tasks with calls that truly required a human touch.
“Call volumes were crazy before Replicant," said Wyszynski. "That caused long hold times and high abandonment rates. We needed a way to automate straightforward requests so live agents could help the patients that really needed help with the harder things.”
Bringing contact center operations into focus
SMIL partnered with Replicant to streamline appointment-related calls and give agents room to focus. They started with two high-volume use cases: appointment cancellations and confirmations, both handled by Replicant’s AI agents.
Previously, canceling an appointment required an agent to manually remove a time slot in the system. Now, Replicant handles the task from end to end. The calendar updates in real time, regardless of when the patient calls. Confirmations are just as seamless and handled with consistency every time.
SMIL’s team worked closely with Replicant to build natural, easy-to-navigate call flows. The process was fast and efficient. Automation wasn’t just added, it was integrated with intention to improve both the patient experience and agent satisfaction.
“Replicant was extremely responsive from the start and able to move really quickly. That’s the thing we loved," said Wyszynski. "We would set a meeting, it would happen, and we’d immediately get a follow up. We had already wasted enough time talking to another vendor. With Replicant, it was a match made in heaven right away.”
High-resolution results
After launching Replicant’s AI agents, SMIL saw immediate improvements. Agents no longer had to manage repetitive calls. Patients received faster service. And the team gained the flexibility to focus on higher-value support.
- 700 calls handled daily by Replicant. Routine tasks moved off the phones
- 20 percent more calls answered by agents. Less queue congestion, more capacity
- Abandonment rate dropped by 20 percent. More patients reached the help they needed
- Agent answer rate increased to over 90 percent. Up from 73 percent before automation
Today, when someone like Jessica needs to change an appointment, the process takes less than a minute. She calls on her own time, skips the wait, and gets it done quickly, without stressing about a busy signal or missed work. SMIL’s contact center now operates with greater clarity, giving patients more control and agents more time to focus on care.
And for Kim, Mondays feel a lot more like Tuesdays - calmer, more manageable, and a whole lot clearer.
“Replicant takes up to 700 calls a day, which is pretty huge," said Wyszynski. "That’s the kind of thing that contact centers without automation are missing out on. We’re taking those very repetitive calls off our agents’ plates and upleveling them to learn new skills and spend more time with patients.”
