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Healthcare Call Centers

6 Keys to Produce a Happy and Effective Workforce

Address These Critical Items to Better Retain Staff and Serve Callers By Peter Lyle DeHaan, Ph.D. Operating a successful call center in the healthcare industry is hard. There is a never-ending tension to balance the expectations of patients and callers with the needs of operational staff, all the while remaining fiscally viable. Here are six […]

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Healthcare Call Centers

Call Center or Contact Center?

Technology Provides More Communication Channels to Serve Patients Better By Peter Lyle DeHaan, PhD The label of call center referencing outward-facing communications is an historically accurate term. At one time it handled calls from a central location. Hence, we formed a descriptively accurate name of call center. But many call centers have moved beyond calls […]

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Healthcare Call Centers

Call Center Stakeholder Integration

Connect with Critical Groups Who Often Go Overlooked By Peter Lyle DeHaan, Ph.D. As we wrap up our five-part series, Integrate Your Call Center, our fourth consideration is stakeholder integration. (If you want to review, the other three are Integrate Your Call Center Staff, Integrate Your Call Center Tools, and Integrate with Your Organization.) When […]

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Healthcare Call Centers

New Skills for Today’s Agents

Hire Staff with the Abilities That Today’s Consumers Need and Expect By Peter Lyle DeHaan, PhD There was a time when hiring managers looked for three key skills in their call center applicants: a pleasant and understandable telephone voice, good spelling, and neat penmanship. Yes, legible writing was key because everything was handwritten. Then computers […]

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Healthcare Call Centers

Integrate with Your Organization

Don’t Stay in Your Silo or Function in Isolation By Peter Lyle DeHaan, Ph.D. I once needed to call a company in the healthcare sector. With their call center I encountered long wait times, surly representatives, and little help in resolving my dilemma. I made many unsuccessful phone calls. At last, one rep transferred me […]

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Healthcare Call Centers

Do Video Calls Have a Place in Your Contact Center?

Examine the Benefits and Disadvantages of Video Calling By Peter Lyle DeHaan, PhD For years, some call center managers have looked forward to having video capability in their call centers. Others weren’t so open to video calls. And most agents have opposed it as well. Yet the past few years have prepared us, even conditioned […]

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Healthcare Call Centers

Integrate Your Call Center Tools

Make Sure Each Piece of Contact Center Technology Works as a Seamless System By Peter Lyle DeHaan, Ph.D. In continuing our series on call center integration, we move to the topic of technology, specifically the need to integrate your call center tools. Today’s vendors offer a wide array of technology options to enhance the contact […]

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Healthcare Call Centers

Remote Patient Monitoring

Add New Services to Better Serve Your Stakeholders By Peter Lyle DeHaan, PhD Whether you’re an in-house medical call center provider or a for-profit outsourcer, look for ways to add more services to better serve your stakeholders. This will increase your value to them and help your community. It will also increase the value of […]

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Healthcare Call Centers

Integrate Call Center Staff

Pursue Agent Cross Training to Produce Better Outcomes and Improve Efficacy By Peter Lyle DeHaan, Ph.D. In my post “Integrate Your Call Center” I discussed various integration strategies to pursue. Now I’ll dive into each one of them with more intentionality. First up is to integrate call center staff. The key requirement to staffing integration […]

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Healthcare Call Centers

When Something Goes Viral

You Can’t Control What Happens Online, but How You React Is Key By Peter Lyle DeHaan, PhD Content posted on the internet can take on a life of its own, with the masses sharing it, adding comments, and promoting it to more and more people. This is usually an emotional response and seldom an informed […]