Diabetes Blog – Happy-Medium.net

If you’re a User of the most popular CGM on the planet; and if you’ve needed help from Dexcom’s customer support lately; you may have had a less than stellar experience.

I got a chance to speak with Kevin Sayer about that yesterday. Kevin is Chief Executive Officer at Dexcom. He gave me a rundown of how Dexcom is working on solving some of the issues their customers have been facing.

I asked Kevin if the latest customer service initiatives are a function of Dexcom sales growing faster than their customer service function, or if they’re just looking at things with a fresh set of eyes. The answer is yes to both of those. According to Dexcom’s quarterly report released this week, revenues are up 60 percent over this time last year. That’s a lot. He explained it by saying that it’s one thing when Dexcom was growing from 2,500 to 5,000 customers. But Dexcom is still growing fast, and they now have greater than 150,000 customers. That means when you have problems, they become a lot bigger a lot faster than they used to be. So they were forced to take another look at customer service.

As a result, Dexcom has introduced some initiatives designed to reduce the burden on patients who really could use less burden in their lives.

To begin with, they’re rolling out a phone system upgrade. The idea is to reduce wait times and queues. They’ve introduced a new feature where, when phone lines are busy, a customer can opt to have Dexcom call them back without the customer losing their place in the queue. So hopefully, people won’t be on hold forever anymore.

They’re also adding additional customer service reps. Those hires should continue through the month of May.

In addition, Dexcom has made some website upgrades. There are new self service options, and there have been improvements to the online store. Kevin put it this way: “If you’re ordering supplies at 11 o’clock at night, which is what I’d be doing, we want it to work well.”

Finally, there are training and video updates. More descriptive videos, easier access to videos, and the rollout of something brand new for Dexcom: live webinars.

One of the challenges Mr. Sayer relayed to me is the idea that with the Dexcom G5 system, they were no longer answering questions about sensors and receivers. Receivers that Dexcom designed and manufactured. They were now getting inquiries about sensors and phones. Phones that they didn’t design and don’t manufacture. So that slows up customer service a bit, though he feels they’re getting better at it.

At the end of our conversation, we talked about Dexcom at ten years old. How does he feel about shepherding the company into its second decade?

Kevin admitted that there aren’t a lot of examples to go by in the diabetes device world, because so many have gone out of business before reaching the ten year mark. So in a way, Dexcom is blazing its own trail, while still growing its customer base in a big way. And he told me something that I would expect every CEO to say: Dexcom’s patients are the most important part of their business.

Let’s hope that the phone system upgrades, website improvements, and customer service hires help Dexcom come through for their patients for many more years to come.