The 6 Best Practices Of a Healthcare Call Center

People who call a contact center in the health sector are not only customers, but also patients who need assistance and guidance to make an appointment, make a query about their health or a medical test, or request information about their policy.

Leveraging certain strategies to optimize a healthcare call center’s service and meet patient needs can improve their experience (PX) and maintain their loyalty. Contact centers rely on automation, Artificial Intelligence (AI), and self-service solutions to improve the customer journey.

What Are The Best Practices For Optimizing Healthcare Call Center Operations?

Optimizing the operations of a contact center in the health sector implies making improvements in both processes and technology. Here are six best practices to increase the efficiency and performance of a healthcare call center.

1) Leverage a Robust Customer Relationship Management Platform

Customer relationship management (CRM) solutions help unifies all the processes involved in keeping up with customers. In this sense, there are a large number of options for healthcare organizations of all kinds that make available to call center agents all the necessary information, medical history and patient data to effectively address their queries.

2) Adopt Cloud-Based Service Strategies

Moving contact center operations to the cloud brings tremendous business value, including reduced operating costs and access to a more accurate and scalable data evaluation infrastructure.

Having at your disposal all the necessary tools to conduct strategic analysis of data related to calls at scale could make it possible for a company to identify better ways to serve patients and thus protect their interests.

3) Pay Attention To Compliance Concerns

Compliance in the healthcare sector is not a minor concern: fines for non-compliance can be very high and negatively affect the reputation of a healthcare organization. Making sure all team members, especially healthcare call center agents, are well versed in HIPAA (Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act) procedures and other legal needs prevents issues that could jeopardize relationships with patients.

4) Calculate And Track The Right KPIs

The call center KPIs you choose to track do more than describe your team’s performance in a way that’s easily assessed from a central dashboard. Each and every KPI you use predefines your team’s focus and priorities. Some sources suggest that you track metrics like patient satisfaction rate, a perfect option for improving patient satisfaction over time. Others mention the importance of measuring average drive time and more. One thing is for sure; you will need to track the appropriate KPIs to understand your current successes as well as areas where you can improve.

5) Implement Self-Service Solutions

Frequently Asked Questions (FAQs) are an often overlooked option for building a patient support system, but they are much more useful than you might imagine. A FAQ portal can improve patient satisfaction and experience (PX), while reducing the number of calls contact center agents receive and handle on a day-to-day basis. In fact, according to Forrester, frequently asked questions are widely used by patients to answer their questions.

6) Prioritize EHR Integrations

A CRM without access to patients’ electronic health records (EHRs) cannot truly empower call center agents to deliver prompt and accurate assistance to callers within a reasonable amount of time. This link forms the basis for additional functions, such as scheduling appointments with family doctors and resolving health history concerns that would otherwise be beyond the agent’s knowledge.

In conclusion, to improve a health care call center, it is convenient to be open to innovate and adopt new strategies. For example, through the implementation of an omnichannel contact center, which offers multiple functionalities to medical care call centers and allows users to communicate through their preferred digital channel.

As patient needs and expectations change and evolve, the importance of basing agent actions on empathy, active listening, legal consideration and accuracy can make a world of difference.