Category: Call Center

Call center articles by Peter Lyle DeHaan, PhD

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Call Center

Is Your Call Center Ready for Anything?

How to Survive When Receiving Twice the Calls or Having Half the Staff or Both

By Peter Lyle DeHaan, PhD

Running a call center is hard, at least doing it right. Even under normal conditions, managers struggle to balance traffic and staffing levels while maintaining high quality and minimizing complaints.

Author Peter Lyle DeHaan

But what happens when conditions aren’t normal? If you’re slammed with calls for an extended period, how will you fare? What happens if several agents can’t make it into work? What if the remote access portion of your system goes down, leaving your local staff to deal with everything?

One solution is to ignore the risk and hope nothing abnormal happens. But eventually, something abnormal will occur. It might be a weather event, a natural disaster, or a manmade crisis.

Use your imagination—it’s easy to see that any number of things that could cause call traffic to spike or your staffing levels to drop. In fact, these both could happen at the same time. How well could your call center manage trying to handle twice the number of calls with half the staff?

Here are some ideas:

call center

Multilocation

If the source of the problem that moves you from normal to not normal is local, having a multilocation call center is one easy solution—provided that the other call centers are far enough away to not have the same scenario affect them.

Of course, this strains the other call centers in the network, but more locations and more agents to share the load reduces the negative impact.

Remote Workforce

Many call centers use some work-at-home agents, whereas others prefer all staff to work from one centralized location to allow for better management. Regardless, allowing staff to work from a remote location during a crisis is a key way to minimize the impact.

This could provide options for staff unable to make it into the office, as well as make it easier for staff not scheduled to login and help.

Strategic Partners

Having multiple locations and allowing staff to work remotely are key solutions to deal with abnormal call center scenarios. However, these tactics only go so far. To supplement these two approaches, form strategic partnerships with other call centers that can help during an emergency.

But select a call center partner geographically distant from you. If you’re on the coast, work with one who is inland. If you’re in the north part of the country, find one in the south. If you’re east, go west.

Vendor Solutions

Check with your vendor to see what disaster mitigation solutions they offer. They may be able to help you better handle a not-normal call center situation. They could also recommend strategic partners for you to work with.

Outsourcing

If you’re a corporate call center, you may want to arrange with an outsourcing call center to help during a crisis. And if you’re an outsourcing call center, you know how this functions, so work with another outsourcing call center to help you.

Automate

Regardless of your paradigm to provide people to help people, sometimes automating portions of your call response will serve callers better than by not answering their phone calls at all or making them wait in queue a long time for the next available agent.

Plan Now

The key to make any of this work is planning. When things are going along normally for you and your call center, it’s the ideal time to come up with solutions for when normal goes away. Don’t wait for a crisis to hit and then scramble for answers.

Preparation today will help achieve success for tomorrow, even under less-than-ideal situations. When disaster strikes, you’ll be glad you have a plan to deal with it.

Read more in Peter’s Sticky Series books: Sticky Leadership and Management, Sticky Sales and Marketing, and Sticky Customer Service featuring his compelling story-driven insights and tips.

Peter Lyle DeHaan, PhD, is the publisher and editor-in-chief of Connections Magazine, covering the call center teleservices industry. Read his latest book, Healthcare Call Center Essentials.

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Call Center

Our Seventeenth Annual Buyers Guide

We Celebrate the Many Companies and People Who Make Connections Magazine Possible

By Peter Lyle DeHaan, PhD

With this issue of Connections Magazine, we start our twenty-seventh year of continuous publication. It started in July 1993 when Steve and Chris Michaels founded the magazine. I took over in September 2001, just a few days before an inauspicious event in US history.

Author Peter Lyle DeHaan

At that moment, I wondered if anyone would care about a magazine. I wondered if our priorities would suddenly change. But things soon returned to normal, as normal as they could ever be after the events of September 11, 2001.

Connections Magazine started with spot color and was printed on newsprint. Over the years, we’ve worked to improve it and make it more valuable to our readers and the advertisers who make this magazine possible with their advertising dollars. We moved to full color and then to glossy stock.

Buyers Guide

One of many additions to the magazine was the introduction of the 2003 Buyers Guide in the December 2002 issue. This turned out to be a popular feature. We repeated the Buyers Guide the next year and never look back, though we do tweak the format to keep it relevant and useful.

Our much-anticipated Annual Buyers Guide is now in its seventeenth edition. For each one of those Buyers Guides, Valerie Port worked to gather the information of the companies listed, and David Margolis handled the layout.

And they worked on every single issue in between. Rounding out our team is Claudia Volkman. She’s edited every issue since the October 2006 issue. We have a great, longstanding team.

Looking back at the 2003 Buyers Guide brings back a lot of memories. Many of those companies listed then are still in business now. Although some have closed, left the industry, or merged with other vendors, most are still around.

In scanning that list in the first Buyers Guide, I see Amtelco, Startel, Szeto Technologies, and TAS Marketing. They have been in every Buyers Guide and have run display ads in nearly every issue, perhaps all them.

In addition, Telescan, now a division of Amtelco, was in that issue. That first Buyers Guide also included Alston Tascom and Professional Teledata, now part of Startel.

Of course, many other companies in the first Buyers Guide have also supported Connections Magazine over the years with strategically placed display advertising and listings in our Professional Directory, Vendor Directory, and Marketplace sections. I’d like to list those companies too, but I know any attempt to do so would be incomplete—and take up more room than we have available.

I’m also happy to report that most of the industry associations listed in that first Buyers Guide are still around today.

Sponsors

In 2013 we added another feature to the magazine: sponsorship opportunities. Our sponsors are our cornerstone advertisers and provide most of the revenue we need to produce Connections Magazine. Several sponsors have sponsored every issue since 2013.

Our current sponsors are MAP Communications, Amtelco, OnviSource, Startel, and Szeto Technologies. Our newest sponsor, nSolve, joins this star-studded list. We salute all current and past sponsors for taking the lead to make Connections Magazine possible.

Contributors

Industry insiders write the content for Connections Magazine. They give their time to share their wisdom and insights with the rest of the industry. They give unselfishly, and often their only reward is knowing that they helped make the call center industry better. Without them, I would have to write every article, and no one wants that.

Readers

You, our loyal readers, are why we do all this. Without you, there would be no reason to produce Connections Magazine. You read, you encourage, and you do your part to advance the call center industry.

As we dive into our twenty-seventh year, we look forward to the future as we celebrate the past. Thank you to everyone for helping make Connections Magazine what it is today.

Read more in Peter’s Sticky Series books: Sticky Leadership and Management, Sticky Sales and Marketing, and Sticky Customer Service featuring his compelling story-driven insights and tips.

Peter Lyle DeHaan, PhD, is the publisher and editor-in-chief of Connections Magazine, covering the call center teleservices industry. Read his latest book, Healthcare Call Center Essentials.

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Call Center

Are You a Call Center or a Contact Center?

Consider the implications of the call center versus contact center debate

By Peter Lyle DeHaan, PhD

In Connections Magazine we use the terms call center and contact center interchangeably. Some authors who write for us are content to use the more traditional label of call center, while others prefer the more accurate label of contact center. Other authors seem to not care and use both phrases in the same piece, I suppose to provide variety or maybe to subtly communicate that the labels don’t matter.

Author Peter Lyle DeHaan

Some Definitions

The term call center is a descriptive one. It’s a centralized place that receives or makes phone calls. This label has served our industry well for several decades.

Nevertheless, most call centers have expanded their service offerings to handle more than just telephone calls. They may also process email and text messages, as well as perform various social media functions. Some also handle faxes and snail mail. These go beyond the meaning of the word call, with contact being a more inclusive description. Hence we get the term contact center.

Nevermind that in both scenarios, the word center emerges as a misnomer, since many call/contact centers have decentralized their operation. Instead they have a distributed workforce, with staff no longer in a single location. Should we make another adjustment to our industry’s label to find something even more accurate than contact center? I’ll leave that for others to ponder.

Effective Communications

Though I don’t have the data to back it up, nor do I really care to know conclusively, more people seem to understand call center than contact center. When people ask me what Connections Magazine covers—since the title could apply to a multitude of subjects—the phrase call center pops up in my explanation.

Some people nod with understanding, even though they function outside the industry, while other people give me a confused look as if I just spoke gibberish. I fully suspect that if I told them Connections Magazine covers the contact center industry, I’d confuse them even more.

Therefore, sticking with the label of call center, even though it’s no longer as accurate a description as it once was, is the best way to communicate with people outside the industry. When effective communication is the goal, using the term call center is the best way to accomplish that.

Strategic Branding

People who contend that the term contact center is best may be purists who want to use an accurate label (but then they’re only halfway there until they figure out how to deal with the no-longer-accurate use of center). However, I suspect most people who insist on the label contact center do so for branding purposes.

For their brand they may want to distance themselves from the negative public opinion about call centers, courtesy of the people who did it badly and soiled the reputation of the entire industry. I get that. But unless everyone in the industry decides to be ethical and do their work with excellence, the contact center label risks becoming just as toxic as call center to those folks who’ve had bad experiences.

Another branding reason to use contact center instead of call center is to emphasize an operation that handles multiple forms of communication beyond just phone calls. But with most call centers having already expanded to cover additional communication channels, I suspect that most people who want to hire a call/contact center already know that the labels don’t really matter anymore and that they can get the service they require regardless of what providers call themselves.

Moving Forward

I’m not attempting to end the call center versus contact center debate. First, I know I never will, and second, it doesn’t really matter. What counts the most isn’t the label we self-identify with, but the quality of the service we provide.

So the next time your organization dives into the “are we a call center or a contact center” debate, shift the focus of the discussion from words to action—actions that produce quality service and heighten our industries public perception. That’s what really matters.

Read more in Peter’s Sticky Series books: Sticky Leadership and Management, Sticky Sales and Marketing, and Sticky Customer Service featuring his compelling story-driven insights and tips.

Peter Lyle DeHaan, PhD, is the publisher and editor-in-chief of Connections Magazine, covering the call center teleservices industry. Read his latest book, Healthcare Call Center Essentials.

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Call Center

September 2001

September 2001 I entered the publishing world when I bought Connections Magazine from its founder, Steve Michaels.

As a result, I don’t know what day the sale was official, but what I do know is that the package of publication’s records and files arrived on September 10, 2001.

Early that next day, I dove into the treasure trove of information that would set my career in a new direction. I was understandably excited and wanted to quickly grasp the nuances of my new business.

My morning bliss, however, was interrupted by my bride who uncharacteristically popped into my office to inform me that a plane had flown into the World Trade Center building.

Assuming that it as a novice pilot in a single engine plane, I dismissed the news and resumed work. But not for long.

Soon I was drawn to the TV and the horrific events that would forever change life in the United States. For a time, my labors no longer mattered; ceasing all attempts to work, I watched the news in shock.

I wondered what this would mean to the future of business and commerce—and the magazine operation I had just bought. Would I end up being a victim of bad timing?

For the rest of that week, I did only the work that was absolutely required. Then, life slowly began to reclaim a degree of normalcy, even if normal no longer existed.

As we remember the events of 9-11 and the people who innocently lost their lives, we can also celebrate the resiliency of our country and our ability to prevail and succeed.

Personally, I can also celebrate Connections Magazine and the new path it has provided.

Read more in Peter’s Sticky Series books: Sticky Leadership and Management, Sticky Sales and Marketing, and Sticky Customer Service featuring his compelling story-driven insights and tips.

Peter Lyle DeHaan, PhD, is the publisher and editor-in-chief of Connections Magazine, covering the call center teleservices industry. Read his latest book, Healthcare Call Center Essentials.

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Call Center

The Failure of New Customer Discounts

Companies Focus on New Customer Acquisition and Then Encourage Customers to Leave in Two Years

By Peter Lyle DeHaan, PhD

My family just completed our biennial cell phone switch. We’ve been doing this like clockwork for two decades. We pick the company that offers the best price and switch to that one. Two years later our rates jump, and no amount of pleading results in a package we can accept. So we switch carriers.

Author Peter Lyle DeHaan

Of course, the same thing happens with our internet service provider and our cable TV/satellite provider. They also entice us with low introductory rates and then methodically jack up our bill every chance they get. We’re on a two-year cycle with them too.

Loyalty Goes Both Ways

I’d prefer to find a vendor I can stick with and not change every two years. All they need to do to earn my loyalty is to offer fair prices. But they don’t. They give sweet deals to new customers as they gouge their current ones. They apparently value new business more than existing business.

Don’t they know it costs several times more to gain new customers than to simply keep the ones they have? They should, but their actions don’t show it.

They prove their disloyalty to me with their unfair pricing. This causes me to be disloyal to them, and I have no regret about leaving them for a better deal. They’ve trained me to act this way.

The Burden on Customer Service Staff

Each time we switch a provider, we make multiple calls and even visits to each potential vendor, gathering information and looking for potential shortfalls in their service package. Of course, we foolishly start with our existing provider, but they’re not interested in keeping our business—at least not yet.

As we proceed, we take time with our existing provider and then all their competitors, including the one we eventually select. Our existing provider spends time with us to lose our business. Our new provider spends a couple of hours to close the deal and transfer our account. That’s a huge investment of time to obtain an account they won’t keep. In addition, all the other providers waste time with a prospect they won’t land.

The Impact on Customers

As customers, we spend a lot of time analyzing our options. Then we expend more time switching providers. But the biggest investment of our time is programming and learning our new technology, be it our phones, video entertainment, or internet access. Maybe someday I will gladly accept my bill doubling to avoid the agony of switching. Or maybe not.

Churning Customers Is a Futile Business Model

If companies worked harder to keep the customers they have, there wouldn’t be so much pressure to gain new ones. They wouldn’t have to offer their new-customer incentives, which are likely at or below cost. They wouldn’t have to spend as much money on marketing. And their sales and customer service people could avoid a lot a of needless effort that produces no results.

Too Late to Make a Difference

Most of the time, once we switch providers, our former provider then makes a last-ditch effort to “win back” our business. But they’re too late. We’ve just gone through the agony of considering our options and doing a thorough spreadsheet analysis. We’ve gone through the pain of switching.

We have shiny new equipment, which looks promising—once we learn how to use it. And now they think they can keep our business? No way. The only way we’ll do business with them is in two, four, or six years as we go through another cycle of selecting a new provider.

Though these service providers will persist in their insane cycle of customer acquisition and churn, your company doesn’t have to. Make sure you don’t follow their foolish example.

Read more in Peter’s Sticky Series books: Sticky Leadership and Management, Sticky Sales and Marketing, and Sticky Customer Service featuring his compelling story-driven insights and tips.

Peter Lyle DeHaan, PhD, is the publisher and editor-in-chief of Connections Magazine, covering the call center teleservices industry. Read his latest book, Healthcare Call Center Essentials.

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Call Center

Are You Addicted to Email?

Imagine you’re in a nondescript room, sitting in a circle with a bunch of strangers, waiting for a meeting to begin.Finally, it is time start and one of the strangers hesitantly confesses: “My name is Fred, and I’m addicted to…email.”

Does this strike you as humorous or do you see a bit of yourself in this fictitious scenario? Well, the truth may surprise you. An AOL survey revealed that 46 percent of the people in the United States admit to being addicted to email.

According to the survey:

  • 62% of respondents check work email on weekends
  • 19% choose vacation spots that has email access
  • 59% check their email from the bathroom
  • 55% have upgraded their mobile phone just to receive email

Okay, I admit that there are times when I have an irrational urge to check email and occasionally experience a bit of panic when I’m disconnected for too long. Yes, I am part of the 62 percent who check business email on the weekends.

But the other three items are definitely not me. Vacation is a time to separate myself from email, same with the bathroom (which is were I read my magazines—doesn’t everybody?), and my cell phone is for talking and texting but no email.

So, yes, I use email frequently, I depend on it, and couldn’t run my business without it. But addicted to it? No, just a positive proclivity, with occasional urges to partake, but I’m certainly not addicted to email.

Other people may be addicted to email, but not me—I can control it!

Read more in Peter’s Sticky Series books: Sticky Leadership and Management, Sticky Sales and Marketing, and Sticky Customer Service featuring his compelling story-driven insights and tips.

Peter Lyle DeHaan, PhD, is the publisher and editor-in-chief of Connections Magazine, covering the call center teleservices industry. Read his latest book, Healthcare Call Center Essentials.

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Call Center

Chatbots Should Learn from the Errors of IVR

Chatbots Could Follow the Path of IVR, a Once-promising Technology That Earned Customer Ire through Poor Implementation

By Peter Lyle DeHaan, PhD

I don’t often use web chat because I find a phone call is faster and more thorough. Recently I made an exception and learned a valuable lesson.

Author Peter Lyle DeHaan

The email said that my new statement was available online. I might be one of the few people who still download and review online statements, but that’s what I do. So I logged in and navigated to the right page. I clicked on the link for my most recent statement, but it brought up last month’s. With more navigation, I found a list of all my statements. Alas, my current statement wasn’t there.

About this time a chat invitation popped up. “I see you’ve been notified that your new statement is available. Can I help you?”

Without giving it enough thought, I typed in, “I can’t download my statement.”

Immediately I received a reply. “Here are two resources that might help you out.”

By the titles of these links, I knew they were pointing me in the wrong direction, telling me what I already knew. I tried again. “No, my current statement isn’t available.”

Again, the chatbot responded immediately. “Here are three links that might help you resolve the problem.”

Once again, the links wouldn’t help. What started as an amusing experience with technology was becoming exasperating. Then I typed, “Can I talk with a person?”

The bot responded immediately, “I can help you.”

Obviously the bot wasn’t interested in connecting me with a real person. I typed in what I thought: “You’re worthless.” (Though I’ve never said that to a person, I often say that to technology.)

But before I could close the chat window, I got another message. “Let me connect you with a representative.”

With a potential for help only seconds away, I stuck around. A half minute later, Lisa popped up in the chat window.

Unfortunately my failed chatbot experience agitated me, similar to what happens after a futile interaction with IVR. At this point, emotion, rather than logic, dictated my first question: “Are you a person or a bot?”

Lisa assured me she was a real person. We then worked to download my statement. She had me try a different method to get to my statement, but that didn’t work either. I pasted the error message into the chat window for her to see. Then she had me try a different browser. I got the same results.

As we continued, I noticed a subtle change on the statement page. First, the proper link appeared, but it still didn’t work. A little while later the link worked. Then I recalled a problem I had with my bank a few years ago. They would send out the email that my statement was available, even though the department responsible for putting it online hadn’t finished their work. The two groups weren’t communicating.

I realized that the same thing had happened with this company. Expecting the statement to be online by a certain time, the email group sent out a notice, not knowing the statement wasn’t available.

This, of course, brings up another all-too-common scenario: a company causes customer service activity by their own actions. But that’s a topic we’ve already covered.

The point today is that chatbots are part of an exciting technology that can help call centers better serve customers, as well as help agents do their job better. Yet the improper application of chatbot technology threatens its utility by alienating the customers it’s supposed to help.

This is exactly what happened with the introduction of IVR, and that technology never recovered. May chatbots have a different outcome. Both the call center and its customers need this one to be a win.

Read more in Peter’s Sticky Series books: Sticky Leadership and Management, Sticky Sales and Marketing, and Sticky Customer Service featuring his compelling story-driven insights and tips.

Peter Lyle DeHaan, PhD, is the publisher and editor-in-chief of Connections Magazine, covering the call center teleservices industry. Read his latest book, Healthcare Call Center Essentials.

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Call Center

A Disconnect Between Marketing and Technology

By Peter Lyle DeHaan, PhD

I was a loyal customer of a national office supply chain (they’ll remain nameless to protect their otherwise good image). I was a preferred customer, which entitles me to special discounts and occasional rewards (on those rare quarters when I buy “enough” product.) They also send me an email, seemingly weekly, of sales and special offers.

Ten years ago,  I scanned their latest missive and noticed deals on paper shredders. I’ve been using a light-duty model for years and it’s showing its age as it groans through the documents I feed it. I figured that when it shredded its last page, I would replace it with a heavy-duty model.

Incredibly, they were offering an “on-line only” price of $10 for a light-duty model, similar to, but better than my old faithful.  At $10, there was little to lose; the super-deluxe model could wait.

I went to their website to place my order. I entered my email address only to be informed that they had no record of it in their files.

How curious. They had just emailed me that morning; obviously, someone had a record of my email. Unfortunately, the marketing department and the IT (information technology) department were not operating from a common resource.

I was going to abort my order (one explanation why e-commerce shopping charts are abandoned). However, out of a sense of adventure, I forged on. I placed my order without logging in; at it’s conclusion I was asked to sign-up to receive email alerts. I entered my address and they happily took it.

There was an obvious disconnect between what Marketing was doing and IT’s ability to support them.  I wonder how many sales were lost as a result.

Read more in Peter’s Sticky Series books: Sticky Leadership and Management, Sticky Sales and Marketing, and Sticky Customer Service featuring his compelling story-driven insights and tips.

Peter Lyle DeHaan, PhD, is the publisher and editor-in-chief of Connections Magazine, covering the call center teleservices industry. Read his latest book, Healthcare Call Center Essentials.

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Call Center

Be Careful What You Say

People Judge the Company We Represent on Every Single Phone Call

By Peter Lyle DeHaan, PhD

I once had a call center agent work for me who had a compulsion to offer commentary at the end of every call. Her comments ranged from snarky to crass. Occasionally she voiced her opinion a bit too quickly, before the caller had hung up or while the voice logger was still recording.

In addition, her unfiltered diatribe irritated her coworkers in adjacent cubicles. Eventually we reigned in her problematic habit, but I don’t think we stopped it altogether.

Author Peter Lyle DeHaan

A Need to Vent

I get that sometimes we need to vent. But this should be a rare event, not a common occurrence. And most certainly the caller should never be privy to our opinions, such as this agent’s thoughts about callers’ intellectual abilities or the nature of their parentage.

Sometimes we need to go out of rotation for a moment to gather our thoughts and recalibrate our focus before we dive into the next call. And on the rarest of occasions, an agent may require an unscheduled break.

If you work in a call center, you know that this post-call commentary happens. You may even do it yourself, perhaps in your mind or maybe under your breath, but it shouldn’t happen out loud. That’s simply unprofessional—doubly so if the caller hears even a fragment of it.

Recently I experienced the other end of this. I had called a company, and afterward I heard the agent’s commentary—about me.

Be Careful What You Say

As we said our good-byes, but before I could hang up, she sighed and whispered, “What a nice man.”

My mind went spinning. First was the shock that she spoke before disconnecting our call. Next was that I experienced the caller’s side of hearing an agent’s post-call opinion. And third was that I had done nothing to earn the positive label she gave me.

Though I deserved no credit, I hoped the rest of her day was a little bit better because of our interaction.

In all my years in the call center industry, I can’t remember an agent making a positive statement after a call. Either it’s negative, or it’s nonexistent.

Callers Talk About Agents Too

What agents may not realize is that callers do this same thing when it comes to agents. Here are some things I’ve thought or said after a call:

“I don’t think they have a clue.”

“What they said made absolutely no sense.”

“I have no expectation they’ll ever follow through.”

“Maybe I should call back and talk to a rep who actually knows what’s going on.”

When I—and every other caller—make these statements, they might be addressing the agent, but they’re not really about the agent. They’re about the company the agent represents.

Every Call Matters

That’s why every call matters. Each call is an opportunity to impress the caller and draw them into your company. Alternately every call has a potential to drive them away. Unfortunately it takes several good calls to counteract one bad one.

Over the years I’ve experienced both good calls and bad. I often share these examples so we can all learn from them and do better. One call stands out as the best of the best.

It was a help desk call that lasted over an hour. As the rep worked to resolve my software issue, she kept up a rapport-building conversation.

Most help desk agents politely place callers on hold while waiting for various tasks to complete. This one didn’t. She maintained an engaging dialogue with me—though I mostly listened, and she mostly talked. She told me how much she liked her job and what a great company she worked for.

We talked a little bit about the general area where she lived and the climate—a perfect fit for her. She also shared other tidbits that were neither too personal nor uninteresting. Throughout it all she exuded positivity, and her infectious demeanor rubbed off on me.

The call ended, but the memory of it stays with me. Now, many months later, I’m dismayed to admit that I no longer remember her name. But I’ll always remember the company she worked for.

That’s a lesson for us all.

Read more in Peter’s Sticky Series books: Sticky Leadership and Management, Sticky Sales and Marketing, and Sticky Customer Service featuring his compelling story-driven insights and tips.

Peter Lyle DeHaan, PhD, is the publisher and editor-in-chief of Connections Magazine, covering the call center teleservices industry. Read his latest book, Healthcare Call Center Essentials.

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Call Center

The Call Center Can Save Healthcare

With a shortage of practitioners and a downward push on costs, the call center is poised to come to the rescue

By Peter Lyle DeHaan, PhD

It’s a bold statement to claim that call centers are the future solution to healthcare’s present problems. But it’s what I believe. And more and more people in the healthcare industry are believing it every day too. Here’s why:

Author Peter Lyle DeHaan

Contain Costs

The healthcare industry is under extreme pressure to hold costs down. One way to do this is to outsource calls to professional communicators at healthcare call centers. Let healthcare practitioners and staff do what they do best, and let call centers handle their calls for them. It saves money and frees healthcare staff to focus on patients and providing care.

Counter Staff Shortages

We currently have a shortage of doctors, and projections indicate the shortage will increase. Also, some geographic areas suffer from a shortage of nurses, and no one expects this to get better either. Given these shortages of key personnel, it makes sense to keep them off the phones and outsource as much telephone work as possible to healthcare call centers, with agents who can do the work faster and more economically.

Increase Availability

The medical answering service has long been a cost-effective way to extend patient availability past normal office hours. It makes medical practices, clinics, and hospitals available to patients around-the-clock, 24/7. More recently, telephone triage operations have also made healthcare support available by telephone anytime of the day or night. Though this isn’t currently available to all people in all places, it will change. It must.

Retain Patients

Patients increasingly have a consumer mind-set when it comes to healthcare. Loyalty to their providers is no longer as strong as it once was. They’ll switch caregivers over the smallest of slights, which often occurs when they can’t get the assistance they want, when they want it. That’s why 24/7 phone coverage is essential to retain patients in today’s marketplace. The healthcare call center is primed to accomplish this.

Serve More People

Telehealth is another exciting healthcare development in the call center industry. With telehealth—of which telephone triage serves as the entry point—remote populations can now receive cost-effective service. No longer will people in rural areas need to drive long distances to access the healthcare system. Instead they’ll start with their phone. And if they have a smartphone, they can do a video chat, which aids remotely located practitioners in making more informed recommendations.

Let Specialists Specialize

In medicine we have many types of specialists. These highly trained individuals focus on one area, which allows them to serve a niche market better and faster than a general practitioner. Let’s expand this thought to the healthcare call center. The healthcare call center stands as the communication specialist for the healthcare industry. Just as there are benefits of going with a medical specialist, so too there are benefits of going with a healthcare communications specialist.

Conclusion

These exciting opportunities and the compelling outcomes they can provide show us how important healthcare call centers are to the healthcare industry. This applies both now and in the future. And while the demand for these healthcare call center specialists is great now, it will be even greater in the future.

Read more in Peter’s Sticky Series books: Sticky Leadership and Management, Sticky Sales and Marketing, and Sticky Customer Service featuring his compelling story-driven insights and tips.

Peter Lyle DeHaan, PhD, is the publisher and editor-in-chief of Connections Magazine, covering the call center teleservices industry. Read his latest book, Healthcare Call Center Essentials.