Customers have come to expect a benchmark level of customer service. It’s no different when it comes to the healthcare sector. With increasing competition and many players coming into the arena, people have numerous options to choose from. The healthcare service providers need to take some measures to get that edge and enhance the patient experience.
To match and exceed customer service expectations, healthcare players need to ensure that they deliver exceptional customer experience across various channels. This is made possible once you deploy a healthcare call center software for your organization.
Centralized Database for Patient Data
A customer-centric organization should take advantage of every touchpoint to delight the patients. Being proactive when it comes to their well-being will earn the medical organization brownie points along with gaining the customer’s (patient) trust. You need to start by providing the call center representatives with the right tools to ensure that they have a holistic view of the patient’s journey.
A unified desktop with computer telephony integration (CTI) provides the agents with all the relevant customer data to handle the calls properly. With two-way synch between your call center database and CRM, any patient information (eg., registered mobile number, health insurance number) edited by the agent is updated in the CRM in real-time. With a 360-degree view of the patients, agents have the data at their fingertips to deliver highly-personalized patient experiences
Scheduling Doctor’s Appointment Made Easy
Making a doctor’s appointment is usually the first step. Gone are the days when you used to visit the hospital or the doc’s clinic directly and then wait for your turn. Now, patients expect to make an appointment prior to actually visiting the facility. A call center for healthcare streamlines this process by integrating with your existing appointment booking system. This means the appointment can be booked or canceled over a call itself and the same information is updated for the doctor also.
Let’s understand this with an example. Suppose you call the hospital to book an appointment with a general physician. The call center agent gives you a time slot on a specific date. By integrating with an appointment system, the same information will also be updated with the doctor and her/his calendar will be blocked for the same.
Sending Out Reminders & Confirmation
People like to be assured that what they asked for was actually done. Sending out a confirmation email or an SMS will give them this reassurance. We must also acknowledge that with their busy schedule and having a million things on our mind, it is easy to forget about your appointments. The hospital can use voiceblasters and SMS blasters to send out reminders to the patients and their family members about their upcoming appointment.
Delivering Reports in Time
Pathology reports and getting some medical tests done are a part of the ‘hospital experience’ and getting these reports can quickly become an ordeal. Think about going to get the tests done then, having to visit the hospital again to pick up the reports later. This is a pain area that medical organizations can manage using a field agent app. How about you arrange a delivery guy to deliver these reports at the customer’s doorstep? This will make the customer happy and possibly make them choose your services the next time they have to get any tests done.
We are not going to leave the delivery guy hanging. The field agent mobile application will create a ticket for each patient and will provide easy access for the agent on the go. The field agent aka, the delivery personnel can add notes and so can the customer. For instance, the ETA of the agent is one hour and the customer will not be available at the time, she/he can add a note saying “please visit after three hours”. The agent can also get directions to the location and deliver the reports easily.
Integrating Omnichannel Patient Journey
Optimize your healthcare call center to be there for your patients and their families on different platforms. The customers should be able to reach you via whichever communication channel they are most comfortable with (call, email, chat, WhatsApp or social media). In addition to that, an omnichannel contact center software for healthcare needs to be able to provide the agents with the details about the patient’s journey across these touchpoints. With all the patient information at their disposal, agents can proactively support the customers and effectively resolve their queries. The integrated view will offer a complete picture of the preferred communication channels and their effectiveness. Based on this, the business heads can devise an effective omnichannel strategy to boost patient engagement and experience.