Top 3 Healthcare Call Center Tips | Response Mine Health

How you field calls and how quickly you are able to address your perspective and current patients’ needs can be how you outpace the competition and build an unshakable sense of brand loyalty.

Healthcare call centers historically don’t have the best reputation. And, with the advancement of technology patients expect to have their questions answered, in near real-time. According to patient acquisition experts, by 2020, the patient experience will soon be the most important brand differentiator. How you field calls and how quickly you are able to address your perspective and current patients’ needs can be how you outpace the competition and build an unshakable sense of brand loyalty.

Understanding how to operate your call center to meet (or exceed) your patients’ expectations is a must. Here are the top three Healthcare Call Center Tips, leading marketing and customer experience experts recommend implementing immediately.

Always Engage in Conversation with Your Customer

Most healthcare call center representatives will introduce themselves and ask the patient how they can be of assistance. However, the best healthcare call center representatives know how to quickly build rapport and initiate friendly “small talk” to put the patient at ease. You want your patients to know that with every interaction with your company, they will feel valued and appreciated. And, one of the easiest ways to do this is to show a genuine concern with what they are going through and how they are doing.

Taking it a step further, you can have your healthcare call center representatives to enter in a few identifying pieces of information for each patient, such as life events (marriage, death of a family member, birth of a child, new home purchase) or important milestones (birthdates, anniversaries, days of treatment). Whatever may come up in casual conversation should be noted, so that your customer service agents can have a few personal talking points that can be mentioned on future calls.

Frame Negatives as Positives

When a patient calls in, chances are good they have an urgent question or concern that they need addressed. Whether your healthcare call center specialist can help or not, it is important to keep the call positive. Choose your words carefully; instead of placing blame on the patient, or bluntly stating, “We can’t help you”, encourage your agents to say “I understand your concern, and what we can do is…” Avoid leading with what your company cannot do and as an alternative offer at least one way that you can help the patient at that moment.

It could be that you will transfer them to another department, you may escalate their question/concern to your supervisor, or you may research their request and get back to them. The key is to convey that their needs matter and that you will do whatever is in your power to fulfill it.

Maintain a Short Response Time

When patients call your medical call center, they expect to have a live person who answers the phone within 2 minutes. In a recent study, healthcare call center consultants found that patients are five times more likely to leave a message and also call another healthcare provider. That means the time it takes for your healthcare call center to return the patient’s call, they may have gotten assistance (and purchased) from another provider.

Monitoring the efficiency and speed of your call center will be important in helping you to carve out a competitive advantage. Offering other customer service options such as live chat through your website can also be a great way to quickly get your patients the information they need.

For a fast-growing company, having an award-winning and effective healthcare call center can be challenging to establish and maintain. That’s why medical and wellness providers have partnered with Response Mine Health to elevate their call center support to a new level. As the only marketing agency with a fully HIPAA compliant call center in the United States, we specialize in providing your prospective and current patients with the highest quality medical call center experience possible.