Over the past three decades, the call center has grown from simply receiving incoming customer calls to providing a much wider array of services to a broader range of industries. One such industry that has begun to embrace all that the call center can offer is the Healthcare Industry. There are a number of benefits that the call center can provide to a healthcare organization. Before we dive into the specifics, let’s do a quick review of the benefits of outsourcing to a call center.
CALL CENTER BENEFITS
Businesses who outsource to a call center find significant benefits in the following ways:
- A trained Customer Service Staff
- A greater level of customer satisfaction
- A greater level of customer retention
- A variety of services, such as IT Support, Billing and general Customer Service housed in one department.
- Cost Savings
Let’s take a look at some of the unique aspects of Healthcare and how the call center can bring all of these benefits, and more, to the Healthcare Industry.
THE CALL CENTER AND THE PATIENT
Customer Service/Customer Satisfaction
The primary function of all call centers is to serve the customers of the business they are supporting. While we don’t often think of patients as “customers,” they are customers in a sense because they are receiving, or have received, a service from a particular healthcare organization. In the case of healthcare, there is a greater sense of loyalty and connection that a patient feels toward their provider. Therefore, the need for superior customer care is even greater than in other industries. Outsourcing to a call center with a well-trained and professional staff can be very beneficial to healthcare organizations for this very reason. Ultimately, they can be an extension of the care the patient has already received.
Healthcare organizations require appointment reminders, follow-up appointments, and billing interactions that involve insurance. All of this has to be done under an umbrella of privacy regulations. A call center is equipped to handle all of these requirements while still bringing a personalized touch to the patient/customer experience. This level of patient/customer care enhances the over-all patient experience yielding a high level of satisfaction and loyalty.
Among other industries, this loyalty would translate into “repeat business.” While hospitals, for example, don’t necessarily want “repeat business,” they do want positive referrals and patients who have had a good experience will provide that.
A well trained and equipped call center will benefit the healthcare industry by bringing a higher level of patient/customer care.
THE CALL CENTER AND THE PROVIDER
Cost Savings/Provider Support
For any healthcare organization, patient/customer care is the primary concern. However, in recent years the industry has realized how outsourcing to a call center can bring efficiencies to their operation that did not exist before. With the rising costs of healthcare, providers are seeing how costs can be saved through outsourcing. In addition to patient care, call centers offer providers IT support, billing support, a trained staff as well as the latest technology needed to support the services they provide. All of this is available to the provider at minimal cost compared to the significant investment they would need to do this in-house.
When a healthcare provider partners with a call center that is HIPAA Compliant, they know that the call center understands and operates according to the required regulations and that their sensitive patient information will be secure.
Call Centers can bring significant benefits to the healthcare industry both in patient care as well as provider support. At Centris, we’ve been bringing these benefits to healthcare providers for more than twenty years. We are a HIPAA Compliant outsourcer committed to bringing the best support to both patients and providers. In addition to this, our team of professional call center agents brings bilingual support to every business and industry we serve, making the overall customer experience even better. Contact us to learn more.
