Addressing the Myths of ‘Live’ Call Centers

by Kristen White Blogger Individuals are humans which means they have bad days, personal problems that follow them to work and while they strive to be as professional as possible, tones and mood swings can still be a factor. Patients don’t care about these situations because they are focused on asking a routine question or need to get in touch with a doctor as quickly as possible. The call-taker cannot help them with their issue so it can be more frustrating than helpful to answer questions and go through a process with a ‘live’ person.

Instead, the top medical answering services that offer an automated solution give callers a professional greeting and directions with every call and ensure the patient can leave a message that will go straight to the doctor or held for office delivery depending on its urgency. This way, when a physician calls back for urgent situations, they know exactly what the patient said and the answer to give them. Medical offices have found this approach is more reliable and has a higher rate of patient satisfaction because patients are not having to correct the information the doctor was given by a third party. 

Another benefit is the caller determines the priority and routing instead of leaving it at the discretion of the call-taker who may not have an accurate understanding of the priority. This reduces the number of non-urgent calls the physician receives during their time off.

While the physician answering service cost is lower than a ‘live’ call center, it is also more reliable because a computer can handle a higher volume of calls than a limited number of individuals who are working 24/7. This ensures that patients are never put on hold or stuck listening to ringing on the other side and having to call back or wait in line to be answered. The automated system will pick up on the first ring and can be used during the day when office staff get busy as well as after-hours when it is not economically feasible to pay someone to watch the phones. Patients care more about leaving their message quickly so they can move to the next task even if this means they talk to a machine instead of a person.  The true determining factor of patient satisfaction in this process is how quickly the office gets back to them with an answer and with a service setup to electronically deliver these at a specific time every day, staff can create a workflow and dedicated time to review the calls. 

Patients want peace of mind that there is a way to get hold of their physician no matter the time or day and once they see how fast and easy the automated system makes this process then they don’t even think about having to talk to someone in person. In fact, most patients are more comfortable leaving a message for non-urgent matters because they can do it whenever it fits into their schedule and then simply wait for the answer during regular business hours. Enhance your practice and patient relationships with a system that has proven to work better and deliver quality results through a machine and let your people focus on patient care instead of the phones.

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Created on Mar 30th 2020 02:40. Viewed 287 times.

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