Answering services all talk about quality, but the best ones act to provide excellence on every phone call. Quality isn’t an accident. It’s intentional. This means having a quality assurance procedure.
Establish a Protocol of What an Excellent Call Looks Like
The first step in providing quality service is to determine what makes for a quality call. Without this baseline definition, answering services don’t have anything to strive for. There’s nothing to aim at, so they miss every time.
Establishing a protocol for an excellent call addresses many factors, including both the objective and subjective. In some cases, a quality assurance procedure can measure certain aspects of quality, whereas other elements of call quality go beyond analytics to address processes and outcomes. Putting together these elements, sometimes twenty or more converges to provide an overall indication of call quality.
Train Quality Assurance Staff to Assess the Protocol
Having a documented quality assurance procedure is the first step. It’s essential. But if it does nothing more than reside on a piece of paper, it accomplishes nothing. That’s why quality assurance staff need training in how to apply the criteria on each call they evaluate.
They have two primary goals: consistency and fairness. This is so that two quality assurance staff members reach the same conclusion when evaluating the same call. This is essential if the staff is to have confidence in the evaluation results.
Regularly Evaluate Each Telephone Professional
Next, quality assurance staff must conduct evaluations on all answering service personnel—according to a methodical schedule—to ensure everyone follows the quality assurance procedure. They should pick calls at random and do it secretly, to save the telephone operator from feeling pressure knowing that their performance on the next call will face scrutiny.
Work with Staff to Address Concerns and Fine-Tune Operations
In most cases, the results of the evaluations are positive, and the answering service operators merely need to know their quality scores. In other instances, the overall call is still good, but there may be a small element that can require a tweak to make it even better. And in a few occasions, the quality of the call does not meet expectations set forth by the quality assurance procedure.
For these last two instances, the quality evaluator will work with the operator to improve their work and achieve excellent outcomes on every call. In most situations, the operator responds positively to these coaching opportunities, is glad to know how they can improve, and works hard to make needed adjustments. And in those rare cases where the person can’t or won’t improve, they face removal from the schedule. Though it’s a difficult step to take, it’s the right move for phone answering services that make call excellence a priority.
Summary
Medical answering services that take call excellence seriously have established a quality assurance procedure that they apply to their staff to gauge results and correct any deficiencies, should they occur. Steadfast adherence to this process helps achieve great results on every call. And if your patients and callers are important to you, having a medical answering service that provides quality outcomes on every call is just as important.
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.
