Health care call centers help medical practices provide faster, better customer service and meet patient expectations for personalized, individual care and attention. A call center with trained and experienced agents streamlines patient communications in one place and eases the burden on administrative and clinical staff trying to juggle patient care, business operations, and incoming calls.
In the competitive health care industry, providing top-notch customer service is a key brand differentiator. Keep reading to learn four ways medical call centers can benefit your health care practice.
1. Improve the Patient Experience
Health care call centers ensure that every patient who calls your medical practice receives individual, personalized care and attention. All too often, patients calling a busy practice experience long hold times, automated service options, or a direct transfer to voicemail. These experiences lead to more abandoned calls and increased frustration, both of which negatively impact patient satisfaction.
With a call center in place, patients receive timely, same-day attention from a dedicated agent. Call center agents have the time to provide education, answer questions, and help patients fill out forms or schedule an appointment — actions that improve the customer experience and promote positive perceptions of your brand.
2. Improve Patient Management Processes
Patients require ongoing management with multiple touchpoints throughout the care process. But when administrative staff and clinical providers spend more time on small, routine management tasks, they have less time to devote to large-scale business operations and patient care.
A call center can efficiently handle daily patient management tasks like sending appointment reminders, follow-up calls and emails, sending patient surveys, updating records with new information, answering questions, and helping patients fill out forms and schedule appointments. A trained call center staff reduces the burden on administrative and clinical staff and prevents multiple small tasks from accumulating into huge backlogs.
3. Advance Patient Acquisition Efforts
Here’s the dilemma most medical practices face: the primary focus for administrative staff and clinical providers is delivering the best care to keep current patients satisfied and help them get the care and services they need. At the same time, staff and providers recognize the need for marketing services to engage new patients and grow the practice. And there’s not enough time, resources and manpower for staff to manage both needs.
A medical call center puts trained agents in position to nurture and convert prospective patients from marketing outreach campaigns. Your clinic won’t see the results you want from lead generation campaigns without the right people on the other end to start educating, inspiring, and building relationships with potential new patients. A medical call center can significantly increase acquisition efforts and conversion rates because agents dedicate all day, every day to nurturing prospective patients — leaving your staff and providers free to focus on the core business of delivering excellent patient care.
4. Increase Return on Investment
As we’ve touched on throughout this article, health care call centers improve the patient experience and patient satisfaction by providing education and assistance when patients contact your clinic. Satisfied patients are loyal patients, and loyal patients give referrals to friends and family, write positive reviews, promote your brand on social media, and return to your clinic when they need additional services in the future.
Medical practices that invest in skilled call center services can expect to see a higher return on investment (ROI) from increased brand awareness and increased patient retention.
We’ve seen measurable, proven results and benefits from medical call center implementation. View our case study here:
Analyzing Laser Spine Institute’s Multi-Million Dollar Growth
Drive Sales and Business Growth With Help From NewGen Marketing
The NewGen Marketing team has years of experience driving sales and business growth for industry-leading health care brands. We recognize the value of integrating multi-channel marketing campaigns with a proven acquisition and nurturing process that leads to patient conversions and treatments.
NewGen Marketing provides broad-spectrum marketing services, including strategy and investment, analytics, paid media, social media, remarketing, content marketing, and acquisition and call centers. When you’re ready to hire a marketing agency who can drive more to your bottom line, contact NewGen Marketing today for a free consultation.