5 Challenges a Healthcare Call Center Needs to Overcome to Improve a Member's Experience

A call center is often one of the first steps in a member’s journey when it comes to understanding their insurance and seeking treatment. Therefore, a healthcare call center has the power to make or break the rest of the experience for a member. A positive experience can give a member the comfort and support needed during appointments and treatment.

Thanks to increasing customer expectation, most healthcare call centers these days face challenges while trying to provide an excellent member experience. However, challenges can be opportunities in disguise. One has to take a step-by-step approach to improve and deliver a comfortable member experience. 

Here are five significant challenges modern healthcare call center faces and how you can improve it:

Challenge 1: Underlying Issues

When a customer has an unsatisfactory or downright disappointing experience with an organization, they generally do not address it directly with the organization. Almost 96% say nothing or complain to others, and only 4% bring it to the notice of the authorities. 

Solution: It is essential to pay attention to each complaint and then some. You also need to evaluate the process, from the member viewpoint, to determine the underlying issues. A post care member survey can also shed light on many underlying issues. And once the issues are detected, proper steps should be taken to eradicate the problem while enhancing the experience the member will have with the call center.

Challenge 2: Lack of Care in a Healthcare Call Center

While healthcare is about medicine, health, and healing, it is also about caring. And when a member is treated disrespectfully, given the wrong information or spoken to in a detached almost bored voice, the lack of care shows. 

Solution: Call centers need to become more focused on the needs of the member. Agents must exercise compassion and empathy while talking to the members. Kindness goes a long way conveying a healthcare brand and therefore a healthcare call center must treat the callers with compassion, respond with empathy and show that they care.

Challenge 3: Disorganized Processes

One of the most common issues in healthcare call centers is disorganization. Thanks to many mergers and acquisitions in modern healthcare, call centers today have too many incompatible software systems with faulty foundations and resultant chaos. It also affects the income of vendors who offer overlapping services.

Solution: It is important that the call center uses compatible software and consolidates everything under one system. This will help the call center be more organized and will be able to provide better customer service. The organization will also benefit from the streamlined process and start generating more revenue almost instantly.

Challenge 4: Issues with Communication Channels

Customers today can reach a business through various channels, and if your healthcare call center is still clinging to phone support, you are doing it wrong.

Solution: Sure 68% of consumers still use a phone for contacting a call center. But that does not mean that they cannot use chat, text, or email when they cannot call. So, healthcare call centers must adopt a multichannel support strategy. In a multichannel world, it is more important than ever for call centers to up their game.

Thanks to smartphones, angry customers today can spread their sentiments via social media in minutes. Therefore, healthcare call centers must deliver high-quality multichannel customer service to provide the patients with a supreme quality experience. For example – Ameridial offers support to healthcare organizations through voice, chat, SMS, Email, and IVR. We also provide click-to-call and virtual queue callback facility to improve the patient's experience.

Challenge 5: Representation of the Brand through the Call Center

Even in the healthcare industry, call centers are typically seen as more of a cost center than the first point of interaction with the brand. If you want to build a brand positively and grow business for your organization, then you need to put the call center into the epicenter of both.

Solution: Call center staffers must be aware of the big picture. They need to know exactly what to say so that they can represent the brand well. Everything from their tone to the words and compassion should be following the brand value. By putting the member first, this will not only improve the experience they receive with the call center, but it will also help the healthcare organization build their reputation.

A call center plays a significant role in member satisfaction in the healthcare vertical. To learn more about our solutions and how they can help your organization achieve goals of higher member satisfaction and increased ROI, contact us at [email protected] or call 855-385-0602 today!