Healthcare providers often struggle to transform patient journeys with empathetic interactions. However, they also believe that meeting patient expectations is the only way to improve patient experiences and drive satisfaction. As a result, they team up with HIPAA-compliant contact centers for healthcare to ensure quality customer support deliveries.
Studies show contact centers are a mainstay of patient engagement and business outreach strategies. Their operational efficiencies in appointment scheduling, insurance verification, event registration, etc., make hospitals and private clinics seek out these third-party agencies. Another strong reason to find an outsourcing partner for healthcare is their practice of monitoring and evaluating KPIs constantly.
KPIs & Operational metrics to measure efficiency
Contact centers for healthcare strongly focus on operational metrics in order to avoid inefficiencies and redundancies. These metrics help contact centers to set high standards for their services. The top-performing KPIs are listed below.
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First contact resolution:
The first contact resolution rate is a key metric that defines how well an agent can resolve a problem without any call transfers, holds, or callbacks. This helps contact centers measure agents’ efficiencies and determine whether customers are satisfied with their services.
For the healthcare industry, maintaining a standard FCR is crucial. This is because patients seek a healthcare brand to schedule an appointment, claim insurance, or make any inquiry. In every situation, they expect instant and accurate responses from agents.
However, studies have portrayed that only 20% of calls are resolved on the first engagement. This happens mainly due to the lack of trained agents and the limitations of modern tools. Therefore, it is necessary to find agencies known for delivering high FCRs for superior customer experiences.
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Average hold times:
The average hold time is another common contact center metric that defines customers’ time on hold, either before or during a call. This again helps contact centers determine agents’ efficiency in generating instant responses and building customer engagement.
Modern healthcare contact centers understand the importance of reducing call-on-hold time for patients. It is obvious that no patient would like to spend more than a minute on hold while making an inquiry. Unfortunately, such situations often disappoint them, creating a high risk of losing healthcare customers.
Though placing a caller on hold is hard to avoid at times, with a team of experts, it can certainly be reduced to a great extent. Therefore, it is important to engage with agencies that have trained agents and advanced systems to minimize average hold times. This helps patients gain more satisfactory experiences, building a loyal customer base.
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Average call handling times:
Average call handle time measures a customer’s time on a call with an agent. This also includes call hold time, call transfers, as well as after-call activities. Strict measurement of the average call handling time enables call centers to realize their potential in understanding customer pain points and delivering appropriate solutions quickly.
Modern BPO companies for healthcare handle this metric in a professional way. They monitor this metric closely to identify areas that require optimization and accordingly design a strategy that helps resolve problems on short notice.
Experts say that a rise in value for post-call metrics often leads to high patient dissatisfaction and poor experiences. This, of course, implies agents’ inefficiencies in resolving problems over the call itself. Therefore, many progressive contact centers make multiple strategic decisions to improve efficiencies in generating fast and appropriate responses. For example, they use a proactive approach to resolve patient issues ahead of time. They train agents to develop their skillsets and knowledge base.
Therefore, it is better to find agencies that use multiple shortcuts to reduce the average call handle time. Such agencies promise to deliver exemplary experiences to patients.
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Call abandonment rates:
The call abandonment rate defines the percentage of inbound calls abandoned by customers before speaking to agents to resolve their issues and concerns. This particular operational metric measures the call center agent’s ability to address customer problems and make immediate responses without delay.
Every patient wants their issues to be resolved quickly. Hence, they reach out to healthcare brands that promise to deliver quality solutions in no time. However, a delay in connecting with brand representatives frustrates patients a lot, resulting in high call abandonment rates.
Therefore, it is essential to find agencies that help businesses prevent potential loss in their customer base. These modern agencies use result-driven strategies to reduce abandoned calls and assist healthcare organizations in witnessing sustainable growth.
The Bottom Line
Contact centers for healthcare are well-known for delivering seamless patient interactions. They utilize current and advanced systems and introduce result-driven strategies to help healthcare businesses witness an enhanced customer base. Moreover, this helps businesses reduce overhead costs and stay more focused on core competencies.
Therefore, if you are desperately waiting to witness an impressive bottom line in your business, reaching out to the best BPO companies for healthcare can certainly prove to be a great approach. After all, it is better to invest a small amount in customer support outsourcing than to spend a huge amount on multiple other aspects to obtain similar results.
