If you care about your patients and the future of your healthcare business, it’s never a good idea to go with an offshore answering service. There are risks involved. And these offshore answering service risks are significant. They far offset the few dollars you might save on your monthly answering service bill.
Consider these key offshore answering service risks:
Cultural Misunderstandings
An offshore answering service is based in a different country, which exists in a far different culture than what we experience in the United States. The employees at an offshore answering service reflect their culture and apply it to your callers. Despite extensive training to minimize the impact of these cultural differences, they will never be eliminated. Don’t subject your patients too an insulting cultural misunderstanding.
Time Zone Confusion
Regardless of what country an offshore answering service is in, it will be a different time zone than your office and your patients. In most cases, the difference is significant. When it’s daytime here, it may be nighttime there. Or our third shift might be their morning. Although having someone answer your phone by saying “good evening” when it’s clearly morning does not carry significant ramifications, it certainly sends a negative signal to your patients. And if you send them enough negative signals, they’ll cease being your patients.
Language Issues
Most employees at offshore answering services speak English as a second language. Though they may be able to understand basic English, they won’t excel at it. They’ll struggle to comprehend what callers say, and they’ll fumble with their word selection when talking. And even if the offshore agent does speak English as their primary language, it’s likely with an accent and peppered with local idiosyncrasies.
The bottom line is, if you want your answering service to speak like people in the United States, you need to hire an answering service located in the United States. There’s no way around this.
Geopolitical Stability
Compared with the countries that most offshore answering services are in, the United States enjoys great geopolitical stability. But some countries lack this stability that we take for granted. The risk of a sudden change in the political landscape or technological infrastructure can happen with little warning, often none. The result puts your offshore answering service in jeopardy and may even make it impossible for them to serve you.
Provider Reliability
A final major consideration of offshore answering service risks is the reliability of the provider. This is hard to assess from afar. Even a long track record and glowing testimonials can mask what may be brewing at the core of the company.
Conclusion
When outsourcing work to another country, the offshore answering service risks are too big of a risk to take. You’ll subject your patients and callers to cultural misunderstandings, time zone confusion, and language issues. These will drive away your patients.
In addition, there are huge concerns about the country’s geopolitical stability and the providers reliability. Going offshore is too big of a risk to take. Stick with a US-based, full-service, medical answering service to achieve the best outcomes and earn the highest patient satisfaction.
Learn how medical answering service from MedConnectUSA can help your practice, clinic, or facility. Then get a free quote to discover how affordable their healthcare communication services are. Peter Lyle DeHaan is a freelance writer and call center authority.
