Things To Consider When Changing A Professional Answering Service

Physicians and self-employed professionals consider a change of professional answering service company for two reasons:

1. When they are genuinely dissatisfied with the service of their existing telephone answering services,
2. When sales executives from a new call answering business approach them.

In both the cases, it is worthwhile to consider the option of changing the existing call answering service. If one gets better service at the same cost, it would be foolish to not accept it.

But where is the guarantee that the new service will be better than the old one? You cannot act just by believing the words of the sales executives of telephone answering services.

As a matter of fact, no one can guarantee that the new service will be better than the old one. And that is why people who are thinking about changing their professional answering service might find this post helpful.

Here are the things one must check when changing an answering service.

Reasons

If a physician is happy with the existing healthcare answering service, there is no need to change the service – however persuasive the new sales executives are.

If a physician is genuinely unhappy with the service of existing service, it is time to change the company. Modern companies offer better services and invariably better results.

Personalized service

There are numerous telephone answering services. But only a handful offer personalized services. Patients generally feel calmer when they hear their doctor’s voice and so the greetings can be recorded in the physician’s voice.

A good professional answering service company must also ensure that the clients get the exact details they want in the precise form they prefer.

Why Add Voice Mail to Your Answering Service?

In every business, it is a prime principle to please the customers or clients. Many practices and guidelines have been formulated by business professionals in order to obtain the optimal satisfaction from clients.

Offering a variety of options for customers to consider is one of the many ways for them to be pleased. As we all know, not everyone has the same reaction and attitude towards certain options laid out by a company. Thus, providing a few tabs for clients to use is more suitable than giving a lone choice.

This also applies to voice-based customer service, or how a company responds to the calls of clients. Many companies settle for a voice mail system to answer their clients, leaving the customer's concern/s to course through an automated voice prompt. There are also some companies who have an answering service, where a live operator attends to the needs of the client.

Customers or clients, however, have different preferences. Some of them cringe at the thought of having a talking robot at the other end of the line, while others are not comfortable talking to a stranger and prefer to follow through an automated menu.

How about your company? How are you taking the calls of your clients? Are you sticking to traditional voice mails or providing a live answering service?

Most companies have either the voice mail or an answering service. There is, however, the option of combining the two and thus being able to provide most, if not all, of your clients a satisfying customer service.

The integration of both an answering service and a voice mail platform gives your business, in a way, the best of both worlds. By combining the two, you get to offer your customers more options on how to bring their concerns to you, cut down the cost of live operator time, and communicate with your customers with efficiency.

A term used in an answering service, "live operator time" refers to the length of time a live operator takes a call, which also translates to the cost of the call. Voice mail services, on the other hand, have a fixed cost (e.g., unlimited voice mails for $15 per month).

Aside from the cost-saving benefit that you can get from combining the two types of customer service, here are more reasons why you should make both available to your customers:

• Callers get automated help menus.
• All messages for the voice mail service are available in one place.
• Callers can be transferred to multiple extensions including a live operator in the call center.
• No hardware/software are needed to set up the two services.
• Both toll-free and local numbers can be routed to voice mail services.
• Localization of communication, including fax and voice mail.
• You can check voice mails and faxes any time of the day.
• You can plug in a company jingle, short audio product ad, or music for your customers to listen to while putting them on hold.
• You can receive messages any way you want: e-mail, text, mp3 format.
• You can extend your voice mail services to a live operator 24 hours a day.

Also, here are different ways of setting up voice mail with a live answering service:

• Local or toll-free telephone number.
• Combined messaging for faxes, e-mails, voice mail messages, and live operator messages.
• Long message limits – your callers can then give you a detailed account of their problem or concern.
• Live operator option – your callers can press "0" to speak to a live operator.
• Notification through SMS – you will be notified each time someone reaches your voice mail.
• Caller ID – you can screen your calls and filter which ones can be sent to the voice mail.
• Customized on-hold greeting – You can make the greeting an introduction about your business.

A survey has reflected that 7 out of 10 callers do not leave voice mails. However, this shouldn't discourage you from adding a voice mail to your live answering service. Remember the main benefits of adding voice mail: (1) lessening live operator time and thus increasing the time to accommodate pending calls, (2) filtering calls, that is, determining which ones are in dire need of a live operator and which ones can settle for automated menus. Surely, the benefits outweigh the mentioned statistic.

Having both types of service available for your customers or clients can stretch the capacity of your company to offer dedicated and quality customer service. As pointed out, addressing the concerns of your customers through voice mail and live answering service is very advantageous for your business and for your clients as well.

Older Post:

• When Physicians and Medical Call Centers Don’t Go Well
• Answering Calls for a Difference
• How to Choose the Right Answering Service

Medical Answering Service: How It Affects Doctor-Patient Relations

Before, medical consultations, prescriptions, diagnoses, and the like can only be obtained by personally seeing a doctor. Now, with the rise of the outsourcing industry, the face of doctor-patient relationships has drastically changed.

Physicians used to win the trust of patients by constantly having one-on-one meetings, gaining the latter's loyalty by accommodating regular visits to the clinic to listen to health concerns. However, along with an increasing number of loyal patients comes being swamped with so many responsibilities and medical concerns to attend to. Situations involving life-and-death matters would all come at the same time. In turn, some patients are left unattended, making the number of loyal patients dwindle.

Doctors have to cover their areas of responsibility at all times, may it be after their shift or even on vacations, posing a problem on how to efficiently manage everything in need of their attention.

A solution to the problem came in the form of a medical answering service, a type of service doctors can avail from BPO (business process outsourcing) service providers. This service allows dentists, physicians, veterinarians, surgeons, etc., to channel their patients' calls to an operator (i.e., call center agent, customer service representative, or virtual assistant) should they be unable to take the calls, especially on weekends, holidays, vacations, and after-hours.

The operators are usually selected for having medical backgrounds or above-average familiarization of concepts in medicine. Also, they still undergo continuing training to enhance their ability in understanding and relaying received medical information from/to patients and doctors.

A patient who is unable to reach his/her doctor is redirected to an answering service, wherein the operator may inform the patient of the whereabouts of the doctor, takes note of the concern, and then relays the message to the doctor. Also, a medical answering service operator can directly address simple concerns such as providing another copy of a lost prescription, scheduling appointments, confirming availability of lab results, and the like.

The service enables doctors to handle major responsibilities without sacrificing relatively-minor concerns of their patients. Seeing the advantages of the service, many doctors availed of the medical answering service from outsourcing companies (or third-party service providers).

With millions of doctors worldwide taking advantage of the service, the traditional nature of doctor-patient relationships changed; it became more of a "patient to operator to doctor" relationship.

Although the medical answering service has several advantages, it also has the following issues:

• patients are redirected to the service even during clinic hours
• inaccessibility of doctors increased
• inaccuracy of relayed medical advice or information
• mistaking a caller for a different patient, thus the wrong medical data are given
• caller is being put on hold for too long (i.e., minimum of 30 minutes)
• service is used as a means for the doctor to evade a patient 

The aforementioned disadvantages have made a lot of doctors lose some of their loyal patients. Some medical answering service providers were even reported to have operators who tend to conduct a medical consultation with a caller or take the liberty of referring the caller to another physician.

Despite the downside of a medical answering service, many doctors still opt to have the service since it greatly helps them keep up with their demanding schedules. As for the patients or the callers, they take extra steps in making sure that the operator has the correct information.

Outside factors such as MCOs (managed care organizations) or HMOs (health maintenance organizations) have played a part in the emergence of medical answering services. Patients usually have a lot of concerns regarding such organizations (e.g., how these are supposed to apply to their payments for the doctor, the coverage of their contributions to an HMO, and the like). The doctors, on the other hand, usually leave it to the operators to make the explanation to the patients.

Perhaps the outsourcing industry still has areas to improve on when it comes to medical answering services. Indeed, matters regarding a person's health are delicate, urgent, and sure to take a toll in the long run; hence, a service in connection to medicine ought to be flawless, prompt, and efficient.

The outsourcing industry's offer of the medical answering service has greatly changed the interaction between doctors and patients, bringing either fruitful or problematic relationships. It is certain, however, that the outsourcing industry will not only continue to affect doctor-patient relationships, but also create changes for the better of such relationships.

Older Post:

• Answering Calls for a Difference
• How to Choose the Right Answering Service
• Is It Time to Hire an Answering Service?

A Physicians Answering Service – The Key To Keep Your Patients Satisfied

A physicians’ answering service is believed to be the most effective means of ensuring client satisfaction. When you hire medical answering services, you can be sure your patients will never be alone in times of a medical emergency.

Why you need a physicians’ answering service:

·         Very often, doctors are unable to take patient calls which can come in any time of the night or day. During these times, patient calls are attended by these medical answering services. This ensures that the patient is attended to at once, all emergency calls are routed to the appropriate physicians, and treatment is not delayed.

·         Hiring a professional answering service is economical because it helps to cut down on overhead costs of maintaining a full-fledged administrative staff to attend to patient calls 24×7.

·         All patient messages are recorded and stored accurately, eliminating any chances of error which can arise when messages are taken down manually.

·         The system filters calls, sending the ones needing immediate medical attention to the specific doctors. It handles routine calls concerning appointment schedules or prescription clarifications on the next work day.

·         Professional medical answering services understand the importance of every call made and ensure that all callers are treated with respect.

·         These services can customize their functions according to the needs and preferences of their customers.

You can use the medical answering services for a 30-day period to test their effectiveness. If you are not satisfied with the results, you are free to withdraw their services because there are no legally binding contracts.