Bumrungrad International Hospital

Bumrungrad is an internationally accredited, multi-specialty hospital in Bangkok, caring for over 1.1 million patients from more than 190 countries a year, and a global pioneer in international patient support for over four decades. With such a diverse patient base, traditional communication methods like phone calls and emails were no longer meeting the needs of all of its patients due to language barriers and time zone conflicts — while also surfacing a pressing need to handle patient engagement at scale.

While local patients might prefer traditional methods, international patients often found these options inconvenient or cost-prohibitive, preferring online messaging apps like Line and WhatsApp; some patients, especially from the Middle East, preferred voice notes over text, and younger patients leaned toward modern chat. In Bangkok's competitive healthcare market, falling behind in communication technology would lead to a loss of patients to local competitors — so diversifying channels wasn't just convenience, but a necessity for staying relevant.

Confidentiality raised the bar further. Bumrungrad needed any new channels to safeguard sensitive patient information in line with strict regulatory requirements, plus centralized oversight instead of fragmented conversations across disparate accounts. The team used Salesforce to monitor chat and email interactions, but it could not integrate with Line — and no centralization meant no comprehensive way to monitor the effectiveness of patient communications.

The hospital selected Bird as its secure, omnichannel communication platform to offer support across a large variety of channels. Bumrungrad knew Bird would need to integrate seamlessly with Salesforce so the team could use it as a centralized hub for viewing all patient interactions as cases.

Bird's established reputation for handling sensitive data at scale and providing high-quality support made it a standout choice. It was also the only vendor on Bumrungrad's shortlist that could support all three channels its patients preferred — Line, WhatsApp, and Facebook Messenger — without any intermediary vendors.

“We are genuinely inspired by the remarkable strides Bumrungrad International Hospital has made with our solutions. At Bird, we believe in the power of bringing people closer together through communication, and witnessing Bumrungrad transform patient care through our platform is a testament to this belief.”

Danielle Ong, Head of Sales APAC, Bird

With Bird, Bumrungrad implemented a multi-channel chat solution that caters to the unique needs of each patient demographic — and built a process to manage the resulting influx of inquiries with complete visibility.

When customers send a message via their chosen chat platform, they receive a warm welcome message outlining available options before being directed to the relevant chat representative, and each conversation is categorized so inbound messages reach the most suitable agents — enhancing visibility for leaders and turnaround times for patient cases.

Before implementing Bird, patient communication was disjointed and Bumrungrad was missing opportunities to connect with international patients. After implementation, Bumrungrad no longer misses a single patient interaction — and with a streamlined, secure, and efficient communication platform, it has become a more responsive and patient-centric healthcare provider for the modern age.

Bumrungrad plans to add a Chinese language team, and intends to roll out chatbots that perform sentiment analysis to quickly distinguish a patient's simple needs from more complex requests that require human intervention. It also wants to deploy multilingual FAQ bots to field common questions and free up agents for more complicated cases and personalized care — with particular excitement for Bird's AI translation in helping agents communicate across language barriers.