Unlike other call centers, the functioning of a healthcare call centers is driven by an unmatched degree of responsibility and accountability. As the thrust of the service revolves around the health and wellbeing of patients, they have to adhere to a set of standards determined by the industry and regulatory bodies and ensure compliance at all costs. They have to carry this out while delivering the most reassuring of customer experience with the added objective of retaining patients.
Given the fact that a healthcare call center employee steps into to fill the temporary absence of a physician, the role assumes all the more importance. While on the one hand they help to ease out the pain associated with daily practice management on the other they help to meet the budget constraints of running a practice with adequate number of staff. By unburdening both sides of a practice they make it a win-win situation for all stakeholders.
Therefore, delivering value is of utmost importance to the success of healthcare call centers. A recent survey on their performance has pointed to widespread discontent around delivering efficient service. A key reason cited in the report was the inability of agents to comprehend the import of customer queries. The second major reason happens to be inadequate training. A large section of employees, who come straight out of a normal call center, primarily to meet the shortfall of resources, lack empathy to deal with the accepted practices of a healthcare call center. And lastly, says the report, lack of accountability or the perceived inability of an agent to take responsibility for an issue is causing lot of dissatisfaction.
How to Raise Value of Healthcare Call Center Service
Knowledge of Patient Conditions
Patients value knowledge of their conditions especially in case of post-treatment calls. As the first point of contact call center agents must have the requisite knowledge of basic conditions and use them to reassure patients of a fast cure. This goes a long way in delivering the kind of value that patients look forward to in their very first interaction. Besides knowledge, such interactions must be accompanied with absolute openness and honesty. All this calls for first rate training of agents. Below is a list of to-dos:
Hire staff with experience in the healthcare industry. Train them on the type of clients’ your practice receives, their immediate needs and the best ways to address the needs effectively. Always make it a point to work within their competence and seek advice as and when necessary.
Help build a culture of openness within the team. This will inspire them to log and report all misses or errors; undertake root cause analyses on their own; and share their learnings with rest of the team
Teaching the Art of Listening and Speaking
Having the right knowledge should be backed with active listening and speaking skills to reassure overwrought patients about a cure round the corner. When patients feel they are being listened to and are answered in an honest way they begin to trust you and your ways. Every institution must teach their agents how to paraphrase, summarize, clarify and reflect with empathy. And alongside, they also need to master the art of handling irate patients.
Train agents to keep patient’s prevailing health condition in mind. If he is in pain or is taking time to recover, he would in all likelihood take the steam off on an agent. And this is where the real test lies – to take the outburst on the chin and yet find the right way to assuage their fears.
Agents need to convey that every patient is valuable to the business. If a patient is angry because of non-availability of dates, agents need to be proactive to schedule future appointments early so that wait times are likely to be shorter. Similarly, reminding patients about follow-up required after an appointment, such as routine lab test or other reminders will make them feel valued.
A recent survey on healthcare call center says 85% of patients honor appointments when reminded. The same report says timely follow-up after discharge reduces re-admissions by up to 25%.
Transition to a Full-Service Healthcare Call Center
Patients today are tech friendly and so do not lend themselves to the idea of telephone-centric call centers. What this means, is that that your healthcare call center must serve as a hub that integrates all types of customer communication. This way, you give patients multiple options to reach out to you.
A patient may contact your agent through phone or email, or instant messaging and you must waste no time in responding to them, irrespective of the mode of contact. Be proactive in following up to your response, and patients will know you truly care.
Your agents must be aware of the chain of communication a patient is having with you over a period of time across all available channels of communication. This is possible only when you integrate all modes of communication. Also, agents need to be trained to be responsive and equally fluent across all communication channels
With the transformation of healthcare call centers into integrated customer service centers, providers must reorient the KPIs used to measure performance. The standard KPIs of a call center such as response time, abandon rate, etc. do not sync with the metrics of a modern-day full-service call center.
It is therefore important for call centers to:
Embrace metrics that takes into account the delivery of consistent patient experience like First Call Resolution. This should be followed by the standard metrics such as abandon rate and response time
Enable agents to leverage data from all available sources so that they can address patient needs in a precise way. A way out is by implementing WFM and QA applications, and training agents to use them in real time.
Give Access to your Healthcare EMR System
Before outsourcing to a call center, it’s vital that you create a seamless a transition to ensure your patients are getting the best care. A proven way to achieve this is by providing access to your EMR system. This will help the agents see every patient detail, when they call up with queries. And when the agents speak with these details in mind, patients will feel more connected. Furthermore, it empowers your call center agents to update patient information in real time, thereby freeing up your in-house staff from spending time updating patient records.
The future call center will have a more important role to play in your business because they will not just contact existing customers, but even get in touch with new prospects to build help you grow. So, tomorrows agents will have to build solid relationship while conveying helpful information to meet customer needs. Given that the importance of call centers will grow with time, you need to make sure your call center changes in a way that serves you, by serving your customers.
Who We Are and What Makes Us an Expert?
At MedBillingExperts, we focus strongly on health care call center training. We have a proven track record of keeping your patients smiling with the right answers to queries, timely follow up and on time appointment scheduling. We are driven by experts who are trained to understand basic healthcare needs and so can answer queries with the confidence and conviction needed to inspire confidence in patients. To know more about our services, get in touch with our experts now.