Customer Stories
From twenty-minute holds to under five.
How Tamatea Medical Centre cleared its phone queue with Heron — and gave the reception team their days back, with no reduction in staff.
Tamatea Medical Centre has anchored its Hawke’s Bay suburb for nearly 45 years — a high-volume general practice serving a community where a third of patients are over 65 and depend on the phone. Nine months ago the clinic brought in Heron and named it Scout.
Nine months in numbers
182 hrs
Call time handled by Scout — ≈23 staff workdays back to the team
7,770
Patient interactions handled (5,901 calls + 1,869 chats)
<5 min
Average hold time, down from 16–20
570
After-hours calls answered, not lost to voicemail
66%
Of patients self-serve with Scout, zero wait
93%
Call success rate (7% abandoned)
99%
Intent identification accuracy
92%
Of calls with full patient details captured
The challenge
When Mark Lee joined as General Manager, every corner of the practice gave the same answer: the phones were the problem.
"Universally, whether clinician, receptionist, admin, management folk… everyone agreed that our phones represented a substantial barrier between us and our patients."
Hold times averaged 16 to 20 minutes and on bad days stretched past an hour. More lines and moved desks only bought linear gains against a non-linear problem.
The solution
Tamatea consolidated every patient call and chat onto Heron — one platform for every inbound conversation, introduced to patients as the clinic’s new trainee, Scout. It answers instantly 24/7, lets anyone opt out to a person, and hands the team a transcript, summary, intent and contact details for every conversation.
The results
Within nine months, Scout handled 7,770 patient interactions across calls and chats — with no cuts to staff.
Hold times fell from 16–20 minutes to under 5 — with virtually nothing over 10
About 2 in 3 patients (66%) now self-serve with Scout at zero wait
7,770 patient interactions handled — 5,901 calls and 1,869 chats
182 hours of call time offloaded — roughly 23 staff workdays returned to the team
570 after-hours calls answered that would once have hit voicemail
93% call success rate, 99% intent accuracy, patient details captured on 92% of calls
No headcount cuts — Scout absorbs the routine so the team focuses on people
"We were running between 16 and 20 minute hold times on average… Nine months down the track, the people who wait to speak to a receptionist now wait less than five minutes. So that's a massive turnaround."
Mark Lee · General Manager, Tamatea Medical Centre
"Think of Heron as a teammate that you bring in. As any new receptionist, you're going to have to invest some effort into training them… it comes out of the box with some basic skills, but you're going to be spending some upfront time teaching it about your business. You get full transparency on it. It's not like you're relying on what someone tells you: you've got the recording there, you've got a transcript of the conversation."
Mark Lee — General Manager, Tamatea Medical Centre
Full case study
Download the complete Tamatea Medical Centre story as a PDF to share with your team.
"We've got right now in our lunchroom a big thank you balloon and some chocolates from a patient who feels that Scout's handling of their emergency situation has probably helped save their life."
Mark Lee
General Manager, Tamatea Medical Centre