Why hospitals are losing patients at the call center – and how CRM Fixes it!
Modern Health Systems spend millions of dollars on marketing budgets each year, driving top of funnel demand with beautiful TV commercials, engaging radio and podcast ads, billboards, and more. They drive thousands of patients and consumers to their websites and digital assets, with delightful experiences and helpful content. Patients are impressed, hey find a service or provider that they are excited about and then they call…
The “Digital Front Door” opens to a dusty, smelly, dark foyer that is the phone experience. Patients wait on hold, they leave voicemails, and when they do talk with someone, it's nothing like the warm feeling they experienced when they saw that tearjerker commercial for your health system with that cute dog in it.
Why Health Systems fail to convert phone calls
"Thank you for calling – please hold"
Many health systems have yet to create an access center for ambulatory scheduling instead, phone calls ring to receptionists at the local clinic. This model has many benefits – schedulers know their providers exceptionally well and create relationships with their patients, providing that personalized, small town feel that everyone loves. However, this can be a very difficult model to scale. How many times have you been waiting in line at the check-in desk at a clinic, and the receptionist is ignoring the phone while it rings? Or worse – the receptionist answers and says "Thank you for calling – please hold" without even giving the person on the phone a second to talk. Have you ever been the patient on the phone – waiting 10, 20, or even 40 minutes to talk to someone? For better or worse, patient facing staff in a clinic will always prioritize the patients in person over the patient on the phone.
"Name, date of birth..."
Health systems that have consolidated phone calls for large ambulatory practices into a call center also experience challenges. The experience can be cold, disconnected, unhelpful, and filled with long awkward silence. Have you ever called a doctor's office who answered the phone with "Name, Date of Birth?" Not a great start for your brand. In addition, the call center agent might not have access to the information the patient needs, might not be empowered to make decisions, or may give wrong instructions. Even worse, they may not be familiar with the providers they schedule for and could match the wrong patient with the wrong provider. As a patient, you wait three months for a long-awaited appointment and to realize you are not scheduled with the right provider! After that, you're probably not coming back.
What is the solution? Make it easy with CRM!
Good news! These challenges can be fixed with data, technology, and AI. At Doret Consulting, we have a proven playbook for healthcare call centers to make scheduling delightful, easy, and simple - dramatically improving conversion rates.
Delight the customer – with data and automation. Know the patient and know the system.
Know the patient! Electronic Medical Records (EMRs) are great repositories of clinical information, but they don't track the whole patient journey. For every one clinical encounter, there could be as many as five phone calls, ten notifications, and dozens of digital interactions. But where does all that live? Modern customer relationship management (CRM) systems store call summaries, case notes, message inventories, and can even pull website interactions like abandoned carts and completed webforms, showing a real 360 view of the customer.
Know the system! Health systems are big, complex and confusing. There can be dozens of locations, hundreds of phone numbers, and thousands of providers offering unique specialized care. How can you keep that all straight? CRMs have robust data models that can master and store this information, knowledge, and preferences in easy to access screens. Schedulers and agents can quickly find accurate and up to date answers without searching dozens of excel files, SharePoint sites, or sticky notes.
Make it easy with guided scheduling and workflows, AI and seamless integrations
At Doret Consulting, we have created a custom, proprietary CRM guided scheduling tool for call center schedulers, making it easy to find the right doctor for the right patient at the right time based on their needs and symptoms. Agents can confidently and accurately schedule any provider in any specialty without lengthy training times. Special considerations, preferences, scripting, and questions are presented to the agent on screen, removing decision fatigue and vastly improving scheduling accuracy.
In addition to guided scheduling and knowledge management, large language models (LLMs) and generative AI embedded in a CRM workflow make call center workflows even easier. Instead of a dozen clicks navigating menus and screens, agents and schedulers can now type their questions into a dialogue box and get the answer they need! AI can also automate several tasks in a CRM centric call center – such as automated case notes, call summaries, and prompts for next best action.
Finally, the best CRMs serve as an integrated hub for the dozens of systems that an agent (and the patient) may need to interact with, removing unnecessary swivels and silos.
EMRs: Many health systems have 3-5 disparate EMRs and billing systems, serving different regions and services
Cloud Telephony: CRM integrations automate screen pop workflows and can receive phone menu automations such as voice authentication and self-service, along with real- time transcripts
Chat: Almost all health systems have an AI chatbot, but patients also want to chat with a human. Chats are routed to call center agents through the CRM, with automation that makes them efficient and easy to serve
Messaging: While most messages are automated, call center schedulers often find themselves needing to send messages to patients ad-hoc – special instructions, directions, or answering an inquiry
More: Surveys, web experiences, population health, billing, payments, health plans, telehealth, and many other platforms could find the CRM as its integrated hub to make healthcare easier for schedulers and patients
Empower Your Call Center To Lead Patient Experience
Whether your health system is on Epic, Oracle, or another EMR, there are several options for call center CRM success. At Doret Consulting, we are certified experts in Salesforce,Epic Cheers, and many telephony automation systems. We can help make scheduling easy for everyone, with the right data, technology, automation, and integrations. Stop losing your expensive leads with a bad phone process and get the real return on investment you need!
Wondering how your call center stacks up? Fill out the form below to schedule a call with our team. We'll discuss your current challenges and explore practical ways to improve the patient experience.
