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Healthcare Call Centers

Voice Logging: A Call Center Necessity

By Peter Lyle DeHaan, Ph.D. Voice logging, that is the recording of calls in a call center, was once viewed by many as an optional product that was relegated to the annual budget “wish” list, but never important enough to become a “must have” technology and make the approved version of the budget. The original […]

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Healthcare Call Centers

Remote Agent Stations

By Peter Lyle DeHaan, Ph.D. There are many benefits to having remote agents as part of your call center. Remote agents can either reside in a secondary, but connected call center, or work out of their home. Among the many benefits of using remote agents, according to Tom Curtin, president of Amtelco, are reducing or […]

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Healthcare Call Centers

A Little Help From My Friends

By Peter Lyle DeHaan, Ph.D. “You need a hobby,” my wife exclaimed in exasperation. I don’t recall the circumstances, but it is safe to assume that I was doing something she deemed a nuisance. Regardless of the cause of her frustration, her impromptu advice gave me pause. Yes, a pastime, a relaxing diversion, would be […]

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Healthcare Call Centers

Predicting the Future

By Peter Lyle DeHaan, Ph.D. It seems that seldom a week goes by when I don’t receive a call from someone wanting to interview me. Over time, I realized that the tenor of these interview requests falls into three categories. The first group is those who are trying to better comprehend call centers. The second […]

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Healthcare Call Centers

Reputation, Referrals, and Credentials

By Peter Lyle DeHaan, Ph.D. Your call center may be an in-house operation or an outsourcer processing calls and contacts for other organizations. If you are an internal call center, you will be viewed either as a profit center or as a cost center (outsource call centers are always profit centers); also you could be […]

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Healthcare Call Centers

Call Center Credentials

By Peter Lyle DeHaan, PhD You say and believe that your call center is good, but can you prove it? What you need is a credential. A credential is the verifiable recognition from an independent third party that you have earned and met a standard level of performance. Credentials fall under three, sometimes overlapping, classifications: […]

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Healthcare Call Centers

Call Center Benchmarking

A Path to Self-Improvement By Peter Lyle DeHaan, Ph.D. Benchmarking is the comparison of your call center with statistical results from the norm of industry peers. These numeric measurements are called metrics. Metrics can be in the form of financial figures, operational quality and efficiency, human resource efficacy, or whatever is deemed the most valuable […]

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Healthcare Call Centers

What I Learned on My Summer Vacation

By Peter Lyle DeHaan, Ph.D. This fall, the thoughts of school age children everywhere are focused on returning to school. Some approach the new school year with dread and trepidation, a few with excitement and high expectation, and others with inevitable acquiescence and acceptance. Regardless of their personal perspective, many will be faced with the […]

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Healthcare Call Centers

Telephone Answering Service Systems

By Peter Lyle DeHaan, Ph.D. Telephone answering services are by definition a subset of the call center industry. However, while the greater call center industry has a history spanning more than 30 years, telephone answering service has an 80-year history. In the 1920s, and the decades that followed, enterprising entrepreneurs began opening localized telephone answering […]

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Healthcare Call Centers

Achieving Clinical Excellence in Telephone Triage

By Peter Lyle DeHaan, Ph.D. The first annual Reach for the Stars Pediatric Telehealth Conference was held April 30 through May 1 in Bloomington, MN. The conference, organized by Children’s Physician Network of Minneapolis-St Paul, MN, focused on Achieving Clinical Excellence in Telephone Triage. With nearly 300 participants and a dozen vendors represented, attendance exceeded […]