Learn the Best Practices for Your Healthcare Contact Center

While we have stepped into 2022, the world continues to struggle through the global pandemic. As a result, small and large industries have had to shift their contact operation centers. This change has majorly affected the healthcare sector, where many call center agents are allowed to work from home while managing increased traffic in the healthcare centers.

To continue to deliver service to patients and members, healthcare providers are heavily relying on healthcare call center services and the platform they use. Here are a few best practices that will ensure that your outsourcing partner delivers the best possible customer experience amidst the new normal.

Practices to Prove a Powerful Healthcare Provider

Display Empathy to Patients: In today’s healthcare services, people are under delicate circumstances that must be offered empathy during communications. They expect the same from their healthcare providers as they are the ultimate centers to cure their mental or physical ailments. The present crisis requires you to introduce more empathy into the patient and member interactions. Agents in a healthcare BPO services company have the pre-built ability to communicate with patients or their family members with high empathy that will satisfy the customer to choose their preferred healthcare provider at ease. 

Whether a patient is trying to communicate to schedule an appointment with a healthcare provider or raise queries on claims or insurance, they expect their concerns to be resolved quickly. With increasingly busy lives and time crunch in almost every person’s day-to-day lives, healthcare call center services deliver the best possible solutions to patients when they are in need of their service at any hour a day.

Manage Volume Spikes in Calls: Your contact center’s success solely depends on appropriate operational planning, strategic scheduling, and clever forecasting. The best possible way to manage spikes in call volume is to anticipate them and plan accordingly. Outsourcing customer care services to healthcare BPO services providers will help analyze call volume data and schedule agents accordingly at preferable time slots where patients can reach them at their convenience. 

Call center agents are equipped with the latest technology upgrades and act accordingly, respecting technological norms that makes work easier and faster. Implementing technologies like AI (Artificial intelligence) or chatbots to efficiently handle customer queries that do not require live agents to attend behind will also free up your staff to take care of your core business, helps cut down costs for your healthcare organization to a vast extent.

Help with Highly Skilled Agents: Agents working in a call center possess exceptional skills and knowledge, especially in the healthcare sector. They are well versed in medical terminologies, and they can quickly help patients with no doubts during any communication. They also have the ability to address varied and complex matters and understand compliance regulations such as HIPAA Act and other security concerns. 

These agents can provide patients and members with real-time solutions during an interaction. Healthcare call center services use specific workforce management tools that are built for AI-based coaching to allow employees to learn even while working remotely. Such systems have the ability to detect when an agent communicates with a customer or speaks too fast during an interaction. On such occasions, the Artificial Intelligence-based system would immediately alert the employee — in no time — to pause their words for customers or to lower their cadence while communicating. Ultimately, this sort of training could create more confident, helpful, and empathetic agents without meeting with them in person.

Track Correct Metrics: Tracking performance in a healthcare institution holds great value. It helps you understand where to invest in training, staffing, and other resources. In a healthcare setting, an average waiting time during calls, first-call resolution, and abandonment rates are amongst the essential metrics to monitor closely. But Customer services and experience are about more than these metrics now. 

While measuring performance with these traditional KPIs is important, next-gen workforce engagement management tools will permit you to focus on aspects like enhancing consumer trust and making sure agents are using empathy communication appropriately. Thereby giving the privilege to healthcare contact centers and outsourcing your services to keep patients satisfied in their health journey.

Seamless CX across Multiple Channels:  It is important for a healthcare institution to assign the correct agent to patients based on their concerns. As there are huge numbers of inbound calls from patients and members every minute, it becomes quite a tedious task to manage by the health care in-house agents. Here, hiring healthcare BPO services will take care of all these requirements and offer patients a seamless experience across multiple channels.

Healthcare call center services are equipped with multi-channel and multilingual support to patients trying to reach their providers. Patients now can have easy access to healthcare providers through any platform, including Phone calls, webchat, email, etc. This availability makes patients more relaxed and satisfied while communicating with a provider. In addition, healthcare call centers also offer a multilingual platform that allows patients to reach healthcare providers from any geographic setting in their preferred language. Call center agents are well-versed in various languages to assist patients in need.

Meet Patients’ Expectations: Medical emergencies can occur at any hour a day. If a healthcare provider gets closed after their working hours, this might trouble their loyal customer base, leading to immediate switching to other healthcare providers. In such a scenario, an outsourcing healthcare provider company can take care of all the patient queries 24/7, leaving patients with a sigh of relief.

As we all know that one size doesn’t fit all, the healthcare sector serves multiple populations, so it is imperative to support customers over multiple channels.

Complete Customer-Centric Services: Last but not least, providing unmatched customer service is imperative to differentiate you from your competitors. And to execute this implies that you need to treat your patients and members— and your employees — the right way. Providing your employees with the right tools to confidently address customer needs is a vital piece of the equation.

And by Outsourcing to healthcare BPO services providers, you can be stress-free, as they are already equipped with the necessary tools that are required to maintain customer satisfaction and provide them a complete customer-centric experience.

Final Viewpoint

Reimagine your healthcare services by outsourcing your services to healthcare contact centers. In this pandemic era, it is an opportunity for healthcare organizations to really think about how they can reinvent their processes and do things in a more thoughtful way that ultimately benefits patients.

In this new normal, healthcare call center services will be the key point of care for many organizations. So choose your partner wisely to receive the best platter of services. From providing better access to driving down costs, call centers can help reimage your in-house contact cent.