One area is the consumer experience (CX), how community members first interact with a provider organization. Are callers waiting too long to be transferred to the right department? When people visit a health system’s website, can they find the information they’re looking for or are they having to call in to ask about hours or location? Can patients make appointments?
These may seem like small interactions for a healthcare organization, but they make a huge difference for consumers when they decide where they want to receive care. And since most consumers are familiar with an accessible, digitally driven experience in other industries — such as retail, finance and food service — the lack of those capabilities in healthcare can be frustrating.
This is where intelligent virtual assistants can help. These aren’t basic chatbots; IVAs have improved interpretation abilities, can manage complex queries and offer more personalization. And with better language and voice, faster responses and agentic AI, IVAs can transform an organization’s customer service to benefit not just the customer but the staff too.
Building a Strong Patient Experience Base
Consumers are becoming more familiar and reliant on smart assistants. A 2025 Zendesk survey found that 52% of users are comfortable with using an AI assistant for everyday tasks, mainly for managing to-do lists or calendars, or for helping with professional correspondence. And while more than half of respondents believe in the positive impact of AI assistants in customer service, 84% still want human interaction as an option.
Many healthcare organizations have been modernizing their contact center strategies to build a stronger foundation for future automated solutions. The shift toward adopting more cloud platform solutions is helping move organizations closer to seamless, context-rich interactions.
For Jupiter Medical Center in Jupiter, Fla., the move to Amazon Connect coincided with the decision to go with Epic as its electronic health record solution.
“We knew that after putting in a transformational product like Epic, we needed something equally as powerful on the communication side to complete the solution,” Shane Faullin, director of analytics and automation at Jupiter Medical Center, said during the 2025 Amazon Web Services Summit in Washington, D.C.
Now, with callers routed appropriately and with better data about interactions, the overall experience for consumers and staff members has improved. This sets the building blocks for the organization to adopt newer processes with IVAs.
DISCOVER: Which AI and automation solutions are right for your healthcare organization?
Change Is Coming for the Consumer Experience in Healthcare
Joel Suarez, principal CX architect at CDW, and TJ Paulson, principal consultant of digital experience at CDW, highlight the three major advancements in IVAs and why they’re becoming the cornerstone of modern contact centers.
- Better language and voice: Powered by large language models, IVAs now understand context and intent with remarkable accuracy, delivering more humanlike conversations. Expect them to tackle more complex tasks.
- Speed: A low-latency approach helps maintain customer attention, especially in real-time voice interactions, where even minor delays can lead to frustration.
- Agentic AI: With minimal human intervention, agentic IVAs can eventually resolve issues and manage the entire consumer journey.
Organizations don’t have to go on this IVA journey alone. Work with a trusted partner to explore this solution and tailor it to your organization’s needs.
