When patients phone in for healthcare call center services, they are looking for someone to solve their problem or answer their question as quickly as possible. Anything that prevents them from doing so could cause them to end the call and walk away dissatisfied. This will be reflected in your overall customer satisfaction rates, also referred to as CSAT or NPS scores.
There are many ways to boost your customer satisfaction. OutPLEX can help you do so by streamlining and modernizing your healthcare call center services.
Call Centers Serve Many Important Functions
According to Finances Online, call centers are most used by financial and consumer services, but 11% of global call center services are dedicated to healthcare and life sciences. They can serve many functions within the healthcare sector, including but not limited to:
- Scheduling, rescheduling, and canceling appointments
- Answering frequently asked questions
- Onboarding new patients or customers
- Persuading customers to continue receiving care rather than canceling
- Alerting existing patients or customers about new services
- Providing patients with appointment reminders and confirmations
The most important thing you can do is make sure that the healthcare call center services you provide are patient-centered and up-to-date with modern communication technologies. OutPLEX would be happy to help your healthcare company with inbound and outbound call center services that could boost:
- Sales
- Customer/patient retention
- Customer/patient outreach and follow-up
- Profit margins
- Customer/patient satisfaction
When you provide your customers with the fastest, most convenient call center services, everyone benefits.
Conduct Research to Understand What Your Customers Want
You can only give your customers what they want if you know what they seek. According to Brandwatch, marketing research involves much more than conducting a few surveys. OutPLEX can give you critical insight into your customers’ needs by:
- Reviewing customer habits: For example, we can look at when customers tend to drop off or “abandon” calls to identify potential areas for improvement.
- Polling customers: We can call your customers and ask them to take a brief survey about their experiences.
- Monitoring social media engagement: Customers often use social media to interact (or not) with brands and to express what they like or dislike about a brand.
Once you know what your customers need from you, OutPLEX can tailor a satisfaction-boosting plan that fits your needs, goals, and budget. We also monitor your progress and implement course corrections as necessary.
Automation Can Make Your Call Center More Efficient
Using automation or an AI-based solution may seem counterintuitive. Can a bot provide a customer with the kind of specific, personalized service they need?
The answer is yes. According to Page 11 of The Conversocial State of CX Trends Report 2021, 69% of customers would be happy to use a bot if it solved their problem more quickly. However, 55% of customers expressed skepticism that a bot could really do that. It is therefore essential for your brand to use the right type of bot.
You can improve customer satisfaction with automation by:
- Identifying the problem right away: By using a chatbot or IVR (interactive voice response) menu options, a customer can communicate the intent for their call without delays or holds.
- Letting your customers get help faster: Rather than forcing a customer to hold the line, suggest they talk to a bot via text, app, or chatbot instead.
- Pointing out existing resources: The answers to simple information requests may already be available on your website. By messaging a link to your customer, you give them what they need immediately and at a low cost. This alleviates the bottleneck of customers who require a live agent.
- Using a bot that learns: You can use prior customer interactions to program bots to respond accurately to an ever-widening array of situations. This increases the usefulness of your automated services over time.
Automation is a cost-effective way to give your customers fast, exemplary healthcare call center services. OutPLEX would be happy to help you assess your current state of automation and retool it to increase sales, patient satisfaction, and more.
Offer Your Customers Multiple Options for Accessing Help
There are many reasons why a customer may choose to terminate a call before solving their problem. Those reasons include:
- Long wait times
- Too many menu options
- Too many transfers
- Lack of personal or human interaction
- Lack of helpful responses
You can reduce many of these problems by offering your customers multiple ways to get in touch with you. For example, when a customer calls, identify their issue as quickly as possible. In many cases, an issue does not need to be resolved by telephone. Instead, you can offer them the chance to solve their problem via:
- Chatbot
- SMS text
- App or customized portal
This is called IVR deflection. It improves on traditional IVR by offering customers a more efficient way of getting help.
Additionally, you can equip your website with an automated chatbot programmed to help with a wide array of basic, common concerns or questions. This allows customers to solve their problems without calling at all, thus reducing wait times for people with a genuine need to speak to a live agent.
Make Sure Your Software Is Up to the Task
Innovative solutions require innovative software. OutPLEX can help you provide your customers with the best possible healthcare call center services by equipping your firm with the right technology platform. We do this by:
- Choosing the right software: OutPLEX will assess your goals and make sure that your software is capable of achieving the most successful results.
- Integrating new software with existing: We ensure that all of your programs work together smoothly and efficiently.
- Providing tech support: Need to fix a glitch or other problem? Contact our 24/7 customer service line. We will get you back online as soon as possible.
- Performing QA testing: Our team works hard to ensure that your software functions as it should and provides value to both you and your customers.
Software is often the backbone of successful call center operations. It is vital to choose the right platform and to regularly reassess your system’s efficiency in order to improve —and, eventually, to maintain—your customer satisfaction rates.
Hire and Train the Right Agents
Although many of our services rely on automation, having friendly, helpful call center agents is an essential part of keeping your customers satisfied. These agents must:
- Solve your customer’s problem as quickly as possible: Speedy resolution will increase customer satisfaction and decrease your costs.
- Have the right attitude: A patient, empathetic agent can make your customer feel heard and improve their feelings of satisfaction, even if their issue cannot be solved immediately.
- Understand your business: Healthcare businesses have different needs and standards than, for example, retailers. The call center you use should understand your industry’s specific needs, such as HIPAA compliance.
- Be retrained as necessary: Sometimes, an agent’s script or approach needs to be adapted in order to maximize efficiency and results. It is important to monitor outcomes and offer ongoing training to live agents.
OutPLEX employs a team of thousands of call center agents that are well-equipped to handle your—and your customers’—needs. We prepare agents by:
- Recruiting effectively: OutPLEX has a candidate pool that includes tens of thousands of applicants. When recruiting on behalf of our clients, we look for those candidates with relevant industry experience that translates well to the brand they’ll represent.
- Training them: OutPLEX provides all of our call center agents with thorough, specialized training that enables them to be most helpful to customers.
- Retraining as necessary: We take care of all performance monitoring and retraining needs. This way, we spot potential problems and deploy appropriate solutions early.
- Nearshoring: In addition to our domestic agents, our multilingual nearshore agents are located in Colombia and the Dominican Republic—nations close in proximity to the United States that share convenient time zones with your customers.
With the right agents representing your healthcare support operations, you can make sure your customers:
- Feel that you are taking their concerns seriously
- Receive attentive service
- Receive accurate, relevant responses to their questions
- Are well-informed about services relevant to them
- Can access the help they need when they need it
Get a Free Quote from OutPLEX Today
At OutPLEX, we have over twenty years of experience providing companies of all sizes and industries with the latest, most efficient ways of connecting with customers. We can provide your company with healthcare call center services that boost customer satisfaction while reducing your operating expenses. Call us today to request a free quote and find out how we can improve your CX operations.
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Learn more about our Healthcare & Medical CX Solutions.