There are hundreds of answering services, but only a few can say they are an award-winning service provider. Why is this?
Every answering service says they provide quality service, but what they say means nothing if they can’t back it up. What better way to confirm their claims of quality then to have won awards for their excellent service?
The Award of Excellence
ATSI, the Association of Teleservices International, oversees an annual answering service quality assessment called the Award of Excellence. This award, administered by an independent third-party call center organization, assesses overall answering service quality. It’s expectations are so lofty that few apply, and even fewer win; they receive the coveted Award of Excellence. It’s a short and prestigious list, especially given the number of answering services in operation.
The Evaluation Process
Program testers place a series of mystery calls into each answering service over a six-month period. They record these calls for later evaluation.
Two trained call evaluators independently judge each call, rating it using a time-tested, twenty-point evaluation criteria. These trained call evaluators are not the same people who placed the test calls. They also don’t know which answering service they’re evaluating. This means that their assessment is completely unbiased and therefore is as accurate as humanly possible. Though there is usually close agreement between the two evaluations, in the rare event of a substantial difference in opinion, a third evaluator weighs in.
Lastly, a third group tallies the collective scores of each evaluator for every call. This provides a statistical database to assess overall call quality for the answering service undergoing evaluation.
Those who have earned recognition as an Award of Excellence recipient learn about the results each year at an annual awards banquet. Winners celebrate as an award-winning service provider, and those who fall short vow to do better next year.
Not Everyone Applies
Remember that there are hundreds of answering services in existence, yet only a small fraction dare subject themselves to Award of Excellence scrutiny. They know they don’t have what it takes, and therefore they don’t bother to even try. But their website and their literature and their salespeople still state that they provide quality service.
Unfortunately, they lack the credentials to back up their claim. This characterizes most answering services today. They are not an award-winning service provider.
Conclusion
If quality service from your medical answering service is important to your practice or healthcare facility, you want to go with an award-winning service provider—specifically one that specializes exclusively in the healthcare industry. Don’t settle for someone who says they can provide quality service. Instead, go with someone who can prove it. Go with a healthcare answering service that is an award-winning service provider.
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.