Every second matters: How Webex helps Burrell Behavioral Health save lives.

Burrell Behavioral Health, one of the largest behavioral health and addiction treatment providers in the United States, serves more than 60,000 clients across the Midwest, providing primary care, behavioral care, dental healthcare, addiction recovery services, and crisis services. 

The organization strives to form meaningful connections with its community through individualized and accessible care. At its core, Burrell Behavioral Health is driven to remain readily available with lifesaving services when its clients need them most.

While Burrell’s on-premises calling and contact center solution served it well over the years, the organization was ready to take the next step and move its contact center and calling technology to the cloud. 

Every year, Burrell receives more than two million calls from its clients. The organization needed a cloud solution that could manage a high volume of calls with stability and reliability.

When a merger increased its employee base from 1,500 to 5,000 in just three years, the need for a scalable internal and external communications system became even more apparent. Burrell needed to find a solution that supported interoperability with platforms like Microsoft Teams and ServiceNow, allowing the organization to accelerate its growth and maintain its services.

Webex Contact Center   and Webex Calling were the natural next steps in Burrell’s communications technology journey. While the organization did its due diligence and evaluated its options, it always came back to Webex as the leading vendor that could meet its needs.

Burrell leverages Webex Contact Center to organize crisis support workers into queues based on availability. From there, incoming calls can be sent to a Burrell crisis worker, whether they’re working remotely or in the office. 

Webex Contact Center allows Burrell’s clients to access the services they need when they need them. Through Webex Contact Center, Burrell’s clients are immediately connected to crisis workers who are available and ready to deliver lifesaving services. "It's something that’s very important for us, and what our clients deserve," said Jarrett Newberry, Senior Systems Director at Burrell Behavioral Health.

The launch of the 988 Suicide and Crisis Lifeline and the monumental shift to a more remote work environment meant that Burrell needed a solution that provided capabilities with greater flexibility and accessibility.

"One of Burrell’s core values is accessibility," Newberry says. "And it's not just accessibility among us, it's among our clients as well. In 2022, there was a 988 service that came out; a national suicide prevention hotline. Our crisis team was nominated to do that service, so we knew we had to get into the cloud and onto a reliable, stable solution."

Webex Contact Center and Webex Calling’s reliability, stability, and flexibility allowed Burrell to launch the 988 service with confidence.

"We couldn’t accept a 988 service knowing we had a solution that would experience drops," says Newberry.

With Webex, Burrell has a centralized view of its administration and operations through Webex Control Hub. Robust analytics and reporting capabilities allow the organization to analyze both internal and external communications in a single dashboard.

This capability helps Burrell achieve greater visibility into staffing needs. For example, crisis workers can be called upon as Burrell sees spikes in demand through utilization metrics. By reviewing this data provided in Control Hub, Burrell is able to provide better client care by reallocating resources to scale up where and when they are needed most, and down when demand decreases.

No one can predict when a crisis is going to occur, which underscores the importance of a highly  reliable calling and contact center solution for crisis support.

In healthcare and crisis services, time is of the essence. With Webex’s cloud solutions, Burrell’s crisis support staff can take calls anytime and from anywhere.

"Webex Calling has allowed our employees to log into the application wherever they are; it’s a quick sign-on, quick login, and they’re available to take calls right away," says Newberry.

In addition to the platform’s ease of use, Webex Calling has helped Burrell achieve a 99% uptime rate. "I don’t think we’ve dropped a call in the last couple of years,” says Newberry. “It gives us the reliability our clients need so we can save lives."

A crisis can happen at any time and without warning, which is why simple and reliable cloud solutions are so essential to Burell’s services. This is especially important given that Burrell’s crisis support workers are located throughout the region. When a client needs assistance, a crisis worker can connect right away—from home or elsewhere—and provide the lifesaving help that a client needs.

Burrell recognizes that every second matters in crisis support and healthcare services. "We had to choose a solution that was very reliable…" says Newberry. "We’re in the business of saving lives, and Webex [helps] us to do that."

Get in touch with our team of experts to learn more about how Webex can bring greater stability and reliability to your cloud contact center and calling needs.