HearUSA is a leader in hearing health, committed to making hearing care simpler and more accessible through extensive network coverage, advanced online services, and pioneering technology. With over 370 owned hearing centers and more than 4,000 network hearing care professionals, HearUSA helps people take charge of their hearing health. By doing so, they make wonderful sound a part of everyday life while setting a new standard in modern hearing care.
Given the size of the organization, HearUSA was seeking a solution to efficiently and effectively communicate with their hearing centers and support center employees. They identified gaps in communication and operational workflows that were leading to challenges in providing a consistent and high standard of care to clients.
They needed to:
- Create a streamlined communication submission process that manages messages to hearing centers and ensures consistency
- Have a clear, direct way for District Managers (DMs) to communicate and manage multiple hearing centers
- Solve for missed communications, mis-prioritization of tasks and the inevitable time spent following up
- Make it easy for hearing center teams, field leaders, etc. to get the information and messages they need, when they need it
- Provide employees with direct access to key documents, client forms, resources and operating procedures they use daily
- Be certain every team member, at every hearing center, has the most up-to-date, accurate, and relevant information at their fingertips
“Zipline is my go-to for almost everything. Just knowing that I only have to open one tab in the morning to get all my tasks, notifications, and tools allows me to get my day started quickly.” – Crystal Sammarco, CES Team Lead
Feedback Heard, Loud and Clear
When the Zipline team surveyed HearUSA employees as part of our discovery process, their challenges were clear: inconsistent messaging channels were creating communication and information gaps, and time was lost making up for it.
“Sometimes information is missed due to several emails throughout the day,” said one employee. “It’s a lot of information to read over with not a lot of extra time to read through it all.”
Another added, “With all of the new tools, apps, and portals, it can be very confusing to find everything when you need it, while also managing a high-volume office.”
This made it all the more difficult for District Managers to stay on top of multiple centers, at once, remotely. Since HearUSA hearing centers don’t have individual Store Managers, it was particularly important for DMs to have a simple, clear, reliable way of communicating with centers and monitoring task progress.
Before Zipline, monthly schedules, calls with DMs, and hearing center “All Hands” meetings made up the bulk of regular communication, which less than 50% of employees felt gave them all of the information they needed.
It was time to take back the 45 minutes per week hearing center teams were searching for communications, tasks, documents, and SOPs—and give every employee a reliable source of truth to operate from.
Centralization Across Every Location
To tackle this problem, Zipline started a pilot program with the mission to simplify team members’ day-to-day operations and give each person exactly what they need to do their best work. To start and end their day with Zipline, without missing a beat (like so many customers have reported).
It all comes down to centralization plus targeting.
Everything—training materials, company information, SOPs, messages, tasks, and readership and execution tracking—is in one, mobile-accessible platform. With a personalized dashboard that makes sure everything an employee sees is relevant to them, their team, and their location.
“It’s easy to find most anything you’re looking for,” said Christine Vecchio, AuD at a Lakeland hearing center. “I love that I can log on in the morning and see what needs to be done for the day. When it was all in our email it would get lost in the masses of email. The library alone is worth [Zipline’s] usefulness.”
Learning for and on the Job
Since their rollout, HearUSA has expanded their Zipline footprint to support employee onboarding and real-time, on-the-job learning.
Including their learning center as part of the centralized platform employees use every shift, they can couple onboarding with tasks so learning by doing is all part of the process. And key guides, documents, and whatever information and materials they need are right there, in the palm of their hand. Along with Zippy—which they’ve perfectly rebranded as Audie—an AI-powered assistant that makes getting the right information, within seconds, that much easier.
The learning doesn’t stop there. HearUSA is connecting Zipline with their BI tool through a data connector, to report on store data tracked by Zipline alongside other operational scores and key KPIs. Thus, creating a feedback loop to better inform field leaders and future business decisions.
I LOVE Zipline! It’s so easy to navigate. Everything is right there and easy to find!” – Missy Klimas, CES, Wheeling location
Results That Speak for Themselves
The benefits were as clear and simple as the mission. Once HearUSA put Zipline into practice, it became a natural start—and end—to their day. Hear it straight from the hearing professionals themselves:
“I like that everything is in one spot. I can see what I need to do daily. I also love that when I mark off a task it goes away.” – Vanessa Kovecsi, Field Support Coordinator
“I love Zipline! It’s easy to find things that are needed with the search function and quick links. No more going to different applications to look for something. The chat feature is great, and it’s easy for teams to contact us. I’m looking forward to watching it continue to evolve.” – Trisha Knowlton, Field Support Coordinator
“This is such a great tool! It has cleaned up my email and desktop bookmarks significantly. Great to be able to print a document and not copy it 1,000 times…and bookmark the most important messages about how to accomplish different procedures, so you can reference them quickly. As I get time to search deeper into it, I love it even more.” – Jenn Abercrombie, CES, Weirton location
Learn How Zipline Can Keep Your Day on Track
Book a demo to talk about your needs and see exactly what Zipline can do for you.
