Healthcare and medical call centers often claim to give patients and customers the best possible care. However, according to a recent article by Katie Owens, MHA and Richard D. Stier MBA, only 71 percent of patients report they received the best possible care. It’s crucial to maintain a positive customer experience for your patients from the time before they even receive care and after they return home. This is easier to accomplish with modern contact centers that focus on more than transaction processing. Modern healthcare contact centers can serve patients in a personalized style of support from their first experience calling in all the way through their time with your organization. This helps to welcome and comfort your patients and gain their trust and loyalty.
As Owens and Stier point out, a healthcare contact center should help improve the patient experience from the moment they call for the first time for a referral to a physician. Patients often decide which hospital they want to use based on this first interaction, so it’s crucial that the contact center representative listen to them respectfully and understand their concerns, hopes, and goals. Patients want to feel like the contact center agent truly cares for them as a top priority, and this can be accomplished by speaking in a matter of fact way when discussing their condition or treatment options.
A significant percentage of healthcare organizations believe that customer experience for their patients is a key component of their business success. If a healthcare organization loses even one of their patients, it could mean dramatic financial loss for the organization. Providing top of the line customer experience to your patients is beneficial for all involved, and your healthcare contact center is the bridge between your organization and patients.
There are a few steps your organization can take in order to provide the ultimate patient experience.
- Focus on the customers’ needs and perspectives. This can be accomplished by offering patient satisfaction surveys and by performing patient experience mapping.
- Have your contact center financially support priorities that only help with your overall mission or goals. The contact center can be more effective when the focus is on one mission. Learn more here.
- Use innovative contact center techniques. Owens and Stier give the example of a contact center including patient ratings and comments in online provider directories.
- Utilize your contact center technology to personalize the patient experience. Keep a record of not only your patients’ past visits, but also of their health goals. This way, you can use this information for future outreach to ensure you’re providing them with the right care at the right time. Additional examples of personalizing the patient experience include the use of patient hotlines and surveys. Knowing what the patient actually wants from your call center can separate your organizations from competitors in providing the best customer experience.
This blog post was based on an article from AnswerStat. To read the original article in its entirety, please click the link below:
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