We often fall into a different mode during the holidays. As much as we try to keep business as usual between Thanksgiving and New Year’s Day, it’s hard to do so. With holiday parties, treats, and events to distract us and steal our time, many people give into the season, with a plan to emerge fresh in the new year. Call it a holiday aftermath.
This holiday mindset can also affect your medical answering service and their staff. Some services give into the disruptions and muddle through their work as their year winds down. Others strive to maintain the status quo. And a few professional medical answering services prepare themselves well and do an excellent job despite the distractions of the season.
With the holidays behind us, let’s do a holiday aftermath review and see how your medical answering service did.
Did Your Answering Service Falter?
The stress of the holidays can expose the weaknesses of a struggling answering service that hid their shortcomings the rest of the year. They may not have enough staff for the extra holiday workload. Or they didn’t schedule their staff appropriately.
How would you know this?
It could show up anywhere, really. Maybe calls rang longer than usual. Perhaps your callers spent more time on hold. Even worse, your service never even got around to answering some of your calls.
Did your answering service staff answer calls breathlessly or seek to get callers off the line as fast as possible? Was there an increase in errors, problems following your protocols, or mistakes in reaching your on-call?
Hopefully you didn’t incur any of this during the holidays, but if you did, use this holiday aftermath as a nudge to change answering services to avoid a reoccurrence next year.
Did Your Answering Service Maintain Their Normal Level of Service?
Some medical answering services strive to maintain their level of quality throughout the holidays. This is how it should be. These answering services plan and adjust to provide you with the service you expect, deserve, and pay for, regardless of what season of the year it is.
Some professional medical answering services take this one step further. They add a bit of sparkle to every call they answer. They communicate holiday cheer during a time when their competitors are merely trying to survive.
However, if this high degree of professionalism describes your medical answering service, treasure them. Take a moment to let them know how much you appreciate them. It could be a heart-felt “thank you,” a thoughtful note, or even a small gift of appreciation. These things go a long way to encouraging them in their work and communicating the value they provide to your organization.
Conclusion
How your medical telephone answering service performed during the holidays reflects their true nature. Too many answering services struggle through the last month of the year, trying to keep their head above water until January 2. Yet for the best medical answering services, the holiday season is their time to shine. They not only provide the consistent, high level of service you receive throughout the year, but they also add a bit of seasonal joy to everything they do.
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.