Change is normal in the healthcare industry and the rate of change has accelerated in the past several months. As you grapple with both the speed and scope of these changes, expand your considerations to include your medical call center professionals.
You may be surprised at your call center’s flexibility and creativity in helping you capitalize on and build upon industry changes and societal transformation. To spark your imagination, here are some areas to consider in how your healthcare call center can help you better navigate this unprecedented change.
Expand Hours of Coverage
You may have fixed hours of the day or days of the week when your call center handles work for you. Perhaps you answer calls the rest of the time—such as during the day. It may now make sense for you to route some or all those daytime calls to your call center. This will free up your staff for other assignments or to take some time off or work from home. Regardless, your call center can take on more work for you, thereby reducing office stress and avoiding the need to stretch your employees.
The other scenario is that there may be times of the day or week, such as in the middle of the night or on Sunday, when neither you nor your call center take calls. It may be that in the past you decided it’s not cost effective to answer calls then because you receive so few of them. Does that logic still hold true? Now may be the time to have your call center take those few calls for you as well, providing personal 24/7 availability to patients and callers.
Handle More Types of Calls
Look at the types of calls your call center takes for you. Is it messages? Orders? Customer service? Whatever work they do for you, it’s possible that they could do more. What about tracking orders or shipments for customers? Or you may want to turn your switchboard over to them, freeing up your internal staff to handle other tasks. If it involves communications, it’s likely your healthcare call center can address it. But you won’t know until you ask them. So ask.
Serve as Your Backup
If you handle your calls during regular business hours, what happens when you’re short staffed due to vacations, personal time off, and sick days? What about covering for lunches and breaks? Work with your healthcare call center so they can serve as your backup during these times and help you ensure that your customers’ calls are answered quickly and processed efficiently.
Take Overflow Calls
A related issue is when you get more calls than you expect and don’t have the staff to handle them. Arrange for these additional calls that you can’t get to in a timely manner to overflow to your healthcare call center. They’ll handle these extra calls with the same care and expertise as they do your other communication. Again, by overflowing calls to your call center, you better serve your customers.
Conclusion
Work with your healthcare call center to discover ways they can help you better deal with change and the opportunities and challenges that currently confront you. Working with them you’ll be able to better serve your patients and customers.
Learn how medical answering service from MedConnectUSA can help your healthcare facility or organization. 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.
