«There is no need to be afraid of solving an organizational need through technological ventures.»
Catalina Venegas, Management Control Coordinator
With over 10 years of experience, Fundación Para la Confianza is an organization specialized in the prevention of child sexual abuse and the accompaniment of victims, being one of the main social organizations in Latin America that promote human rights, especially of children and adolescents.
Every year there has been an increase in the number of people contacting the foundation for psychological and legal guidance and support. By 2020, over ten thousand children and adolescents have benefited from some of its programs, including more than 700 victims of direct or indirect child sexual abuse.
Although the results were successful, they posed challenges, because with the arrival of the pandemic, it became impossible to maintain face-to-face care and they had to suspend it for a while, while the organization devised a safe and secure system that gave confidence to both people and professionals to continue providing care.
In addition, there was an increase in the number of appointments, generating that all the processes related to patient scheduling, such as confirmation, cancellation or rescheduling of hours and follow-up of the professionals’ hours, became a complex task and committed many hours of the institution’s professionals to perform it manually.
When they began to look for better alternatives to perform these tasks, it became clear that the solution they implemented had to incorporate specialized technology.
The challenge
Fundación Para la Confianza has the reputation of being a close and humane organization in their care, so they defined they needed a solution that would adapt to their needs that were flexible and safe, and allowed them, on the one hand, to provide protected virtual spaces to continue with the professional care to patients, and that in turn, would allow them to professionalize and make their processes more efficient, migrating from a manual system to a technological one in a simple and fast way, without losing contact with people.
In their search, they contacted Impactus Ventures, who first worked directly with the Fundación Para la Confianza team to understand in depth the work they conduct and the challenges they were facing, in order to identify what type of technological solution they needed, which is how they came to COCO Tecnologías.
«We did not want to replace the person in charge of First Care because for us it is very important to provide a first orientation to people when they call, but we had the need to professionalize the system and do it as in large companies or medical centers» (Catalina Venegas, Coordinator of management control for Fundación Para la Confianza)
The COCO Technologies Solution
COCO Technologies is a Colombian startup that offers intelligent scheduling software with robots that automate repetitive processes, increasing the installed capacity of organizations with an exceptional user experience.
Its solutions help institutions to manage their patients before, during, and after an appointment, generating efficiencies of over 95% with an intelligent, friendly, and flexible agenda via WhatsApp and web page; all from an integrated system that handles the same information in all channels of care. In doing so, it supports customer service personnel in processing all requests and improving the user experience by reducing PQR (requests, complaints, claims, and suggestions) to single digits.
It also has a secure telemedicine platform, which allows professionals to care for their patients from anywhere in the world. The bot is responsible for reminding the patient of the appointment and automatically sends a text message or WhatsApp with the link to the Virtual Waiting Room where the patient will be seen; the patient must read the informed consent and upon acceptance will be directed to the doctor’s Virtual Office at the stipulated time. These links are unique, 100% secure, and are always made under the name of the institution.
Work Performed
COCO Technologies worked directly with the Management Control and First Care teams, seeking to understand in depth the work conducted by the foundation, the process flows, and their requirements.
In just a couple of weeks, and through simple and fast data collection mechanisms, COCO detected the main needs of the institution and helped the team in the design and customization of the platform that would allow them to streamline and automate processes, as well as to resume virtual services in a secure manner. In doing so, the Foundation was able to define the messages of the robot to maintain the proximity to the personality and the design of the platform, define the roles and permissions of use according to the type of professional, customize the informed consents and have a secure and customized platform for patient care.
Subsequently, and in a simple and user-friendly manner, the Foundation’s team was trained autonomously in the use of technology through «COCO School», a platform that allows asynchronous training of professionals and delivers a certification that certifies the necessary knowledge to operate smoothly.
The migration of the information to the platform was quick and easy and after 4 months of work, the Foundation already had all the required services operating without problems.
«There was a lot of flexibility from COCO in terms of responding to all our requirements for the different services we delivered and they had a lot of patience, willingness, and solutions. COCO adapted to our needs.»
Results
The COCO solution helped Fundación Para la Confianza to optimize its work, the main results include:
- 25% reduction in the workload associated with scheduling and confirming appointments.
- Appointment attendance increased by 95% thanks to effective confirmation.
- 83% of patients evaluate the platform as «friendly»
Por Carolina Arce 
