Dylan Kopf and Jenny Zhang | Marketing Student Assistants
This month we are excited to feature Katie Sweeney, Associate Director of Quality and Improvement at Exact Sciences. Katie was first introduced to UWEBC six years ago when she worked at UW Health. She then switched companies to work at Exact Sciences and inquired if they could become members. The company joined UWEBC in April of 2021, and we’re excited to celebrate one year of this partnership!
Katie loves the collaboration with other industries in a similar working environment that UWEBC allows her. She believes learning from people with varying backgrounds is crucial and valuable. “Bringing groups together on similar and relevant topics is the best way to learn,” she says.
When asked about her favorite UWEBC event, Katie answered “Every time I go to one, it’s my new favorite.” When she reads the topic of an event, she believes that it will contain important and beneficial knowledge. She loved the Digital Self-Service Approaches & Practices to Reduce Assisted Contact Volume event because it focused on self-service which was very timely for her team. Additionally, breakout discussion sessions in UWEBC events have been particularly helpful in providing a chance to engage with and learn from other members.
At Exact Sciences, Katie and her team are searching and working to launch new products to aid both patients and healthcare providers to help detect cancer earlier. These new ways of earlier detection of several different types of cancers is what they are working towards launching in the near future. Everything that her company does is really tied to this goal. Katie’s specific area is customer service: ensuring that her patients are well-informed, well-educated on their options and understanding their results and entire journey.
In her field of customer service, Katie sees a pivot towards remote working. “Being remote, being more digital and just knowing that is kind of changing the landscape of our service overall.” Currently, around 90% of the employees that are on Katie’s team are working remotely.
Additionally, as the field begins to incorporate more self-service and digital components, she is curious to see how they can shift customer service to being in-person with digital tools and making sure they are taking the customers’ experience into account every step of the way.
Katie is a lover of spring and refers to herself as an avid wannabe flower gardener with ambitious goals for the season. She is looking forward to watching things come back to life after spending the winter planning in her head what she envisions her garden to be like.
We thank Katie for her great participation and contribution to UWEBC this past year. We can’t wait to see more great collaboration in the near future!
Published June 1, 2022
Dylan Kopf and Jenny Zhang, Marketing Student Assistants