Think back to the holidays last year. Hopefully you have happy memories of time spent with family and friends, celebrating life with them. But what about your telephone answering service? Did your answering service make this time better? Or did their disappointing work dampen your holiday spirit and thwart the joy you anticipated to experience at your holiday parties and family get-togethers?
If they let you down last year, it’s likely to recur this year. Don’t risk another season of your answering service getting in the way of the celebrations you are so looking forward to. Don’t let them diminish your expectations or damage your precious time with family and joyous interaction with friends.
Here are some considerations:
Was Your Answering Service Too Busy to Properly Handle Your Patients Calls?
A poorly run answering service will understaff on holidays. This often occurs because they can’t get enough people to work. Or because they underpay their staff. Or because employees know they’ll have to work extra hard and figure that staying home is the best solution.
Regardless of the reason, under resourced answering services often struggle to meet their clients’ needs and your patients’ expectations on holidays. This means that phone calls ring too long or go unanswered. This means mishandled calls and incomplete messages. And this means that your patients may be underserved or disrespected when they call during the holidays.
Did Your Answering Service Reach the Wrong On-Call Person?
No one likes to be on call, especially during the holidays. But what’s worse than receiving a call about a patient need that interrupts a party, a family meal, or an anticipated holiday celebration? It’s when your answering service calls you and you’re not the on-call person. At a minimum, they interrupted your holiday when they shouldn’t have. At worst, you’re stuck dealing with a problem that wasn’t yours to deal with in the first place. And it’s all your answering service’s fault.
Did Your Answering Service Contact You When They Shouldn’t Have?
When it’s your turn to handle on-call responsibilities, you know that interruptions to your holiday plans could occur. But what about your answering service contacting you to deal with a situation that should wait until the next business day?
Yes, you can quickly go back to what you were doing, but the irritation of that needless contact takes time to shake off. It can too easily carry over into your precious time with family and friends.
Don’t let your answering service do this to you again this year.
Summary
If your answering service let you down last holiday season, it’s likely that they’ll do it again this year. Don’t let them. Act now to find a new medical answering service that won’t disappoint you this holiday season. You’ll be glad you did. And so will your family and friends, not to mention your staff.
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.
