Improving Patient Engagement: Tips to Streamline Your Medical Call Center Operations
Is your patient engagement platform working to its full potential? Optimizing your workflows helps agents spend more time delivering the kind of positive experiences that drive patient satisfaction and loyalty. You may even discover opportunities you’ve been missing!
Auditing Your Patient Scheduling System
Establish Goals
Does your patient scheduling system offer visibility into the data needed to establish meaningful goals? A true all-in-one patient engagement platform provides the insights necessary to create goals and get results.
Define Key Performance Indicators (KPI)
With your goals and data ready, you are ready to create KPIs for your call center. Are you concerned about controlling the time needed on every call? Or more focused on perfect patient scheduling? Real-world information enables you to create data-based KPIs that will help accomplish your practice goals.
Break Down the Process into Distinct Steps
Create a workflow diagram that lists each step in the process. With diagram in hand, define how each step moves the process forward and ask how it can be improved. Be on the lookout for anything that slows the flow or may lead to unintended consequences. This will help you identify any bottlenecks in your process and determine solutions.
- Aim for the 90/10 rule when considering adding a new step to the workflow or process. Think, “Am I adding this step to account for something that happens 10% or less of the time? Is it worth lengthening every call by adding this step?”
Identify Unnecessary Activities
You may discover activities that are duplicated or that otherwise impede your workflow. Be open to automating or eliminating them altogether, so your agents can spend more time delighting your patients.
Eliminate Downtime
With the ebb and flow of patient calls, there are often downtimes for call center associates. Using those slow times for outbound calling can increase revenue. Outbound opportunities include identifying who missed appointments, who needs a follow-up, what ancillary services need to be scheduled, and more.
Read more: 5 signs it’s time to retire your legacy patient communication system.
Improve Job Satisfaction
Does your patient communications software ensure that agents can reliably access accurate information from a single source of truth? Doing so ensures staff members receive the information they need without the need to move around. When agents, staff members, and providers have the right information at their fingertips, job satisfaction levels for everyone increase exponentially.
Look for Ways to Wow
Delivering “I’m always amazed” patient communications equals positive reviews and heartfelt referrals. Be on the lookout for ways to make that happen on every call.
- Enable your agents to explain the “why” behind how you respond to their requests. “Dr. Smith can’t see you for that” feels a lot different than “Unfortunately, Dr. Smith doesn’t specialize in treating that area. Let me try to find you a physician that specializes in this area so we can get you the best possible care.”
- Replace the dreaded “hold on while I transfer you” with “I have your information right here; let’s get you taken care of.”
- Your VIP patients deserve special care. Consider automated triggers that identify VIP callers and route them into customized workflows tailored to their particular preferences.
Does Your System Measure Up?
Once you’ve completed the streamlining process, use the information to put your system to the test. True all-in-one patient engagement platforms allow easy fine-tuning to address any problems and to maximize the opportunities you’ve discovered.
Optimizing your workflows is an investment in your practice that will pay off in higher patient satisfaction, expanded revenue opportunities, and better practice performance.
Cloud-based patient engagement platforms simplify implementing changes in workflow protocols. Schedule a call for a free demo of our system in action.
Is your patient engagement platform working to its full potential? Optimizing your workflows helps agents spend more time delivering the kind of positive experiences that drive patient satisfaction and loyalty. You may even discover opportunities you’ve been missing!
Auditing Your Patient Scheduling System
Establish Goals
Does your patient scheduling system offer visibility into the data needed to establish meaningful goals? A true all-in-one patient engagement platform provides the insights necessary to create goals and get results.
Define Key Performance Indicators (KPI)
With your goals and data ready, you are ready to create KPIs for your call center. Are you concerned about controlling the time needed on every call? Or more focused on perfect patient scheduling? Real-world information enables you to create data-based KPIs that will help accomplish your practice goals.
Break Down the Process into Distinct Steps
Create a workflow diagram that lists each step in the process. With diagram in hand, define how each step moves the process forward and ask how it can be improved. Be on the lookout for anything that slows the flow or may lead to unintended consequences. This will help you identify any bottlenecks in your process and determine solutions.
- Aim for the 90/10 rule when considering adding a new step to the workflow or process. Think, “Am I adding this step to account for something that happens 10% or less of the time? Is it worth lengthening every call by adding this step?”
Identify Unnecessary Activities
You may discover activities that are duplicated or that otherwise impede your workflow. Be open to automating or eliminating them altogether, so your agents can spend more time delighting your patients.
Eliminate Downtime
With the ebb and flow of patient calls, there are often downtimes for call center associates. Using those slow times for outbound calling can increase revenue. Outbound opportunities include identifying who missed appointments, who needs a follow-up, what ancillary services need to be scheduled, and more.
Read more: 5 signs it’s time to retire your legacy patient communication system.
Improve Job Satisfaction
Does your patient communications software ensure that agents can reliably access accurate information from a single source of truth? Doing so ensures staff members receive the information they need without the need to move around. When agents, staff members, and providers have the right information at their fingertips, job satisfaction levels for everyone increase exponentially.
Look for Ways to Wow
Delivering “I’m always amazed” patient communications equals positive reviews and heartfelt referrals. Be on the lookout for ways to make that happen on every call.
- Enable your agents to explain the “why” behind how you respond to their requests. “Dr. Smith can’t see you for that” feels a lot different than “Unfortunately, Dr. Smith doesn’t specialize in treating that area. Let me try to find you a physician that specializes in this area so we can get you the best possible care.”
- Replace the dreaded “hold on while I transfer you” with “I have your information right here; let’s get you taken care of.”
- Your VIP patients deserve special care. Consider automated triggers that identify VIP callers and route them into customized workflows tailored to their particular preferences.
Does Your System Measure Up?
Once you’ve completed the streamlining process, use the information to put your system to the test. True all-in-one patient engagement platforms allow easy fine-tuning to address any problems and to maximize the opportunities you’ve discovered.
Optimizing your workflows is an investment in your practice that will pay off in higher patient satisfaction, expanded revenue opportunities, and better practice performance.
Cloud-based patient engagement platforms simplify implementing changes in workflow protocols. Schedule a call for a free demo of our system in action.
