How Healthcare Call Centers Turned Appointment Booking Process Painless?

Be it the BFSI, ecommerce, or utility suppliers, every business, regardless of their industry verticals, has set the benchmark high for customer services. However, there is no exception when it comes to healthcare customer services.

Due to technological advancements and changes in healthcare customer support services, patients’ expectations for better CX are increasing every day. As a result, many healthcare brands have partnered with agencies offering outsourcing healthcare answering services to ensure better customer satisfaction and enhanced experiences.

Healthcare BPO Market Overview

If you go through the healthcare call center market size as surveyed by Markets and Markets, it is estimated to hit USD 468.5 million by 2026 from USD 296.4 million in 2021. The CAGR during this period is 9.6%. The projected value shows how exponentially the healthcare BPO market is expanding.

Any guesses why? Healthcare call centers are responsible for performing a plethora of tasks. These include handling patient queries, billing and claim management, generating feedback, obtaining insurance verification, and most importantly, scheduling appointments.

Patients nowadays look for an easy way out to book an appointment prior to the actual visit. Studies say 68% of patients hardly prefer visiting the hospitals that do not provide the ability to book, schedule, and cancel appointments online. We guess you don’t like to lose such a significant number of people by avoiding this crucial option. This is when the healthcare call centers come into the picture.

How does a healthcare call center ease the appointment booking process?

Many successful healthcare brands are outsourcing healthcare answering services to offer patients a seamless appointment booking process. Take a look at how actually a healthcare call center can turn the appointment booking process painless for the patients.

1. Accessing patients’ data easily –

   Patients reaching out to a multispecialty hospital or a clinic for booking appointments never appreciate sharing their personal details or health-related information again and again. Many customer-centric organizations understanding these pain points reach out to the call centers to satisfy the patients’ needs.

   A healthcare call center uses a centralized database to secure the patients’ details. Whenever a patient makes a call, the agents access the individual details and get a holistic view of the patient’s journey. These tools not just ease out the appointment booking process but even offer a personalized patient experience.

2. Generating a time slot –

   One of the most tiring things about scheduling appointments is getting a proper time slot. However, the customer support representatives make this step simpler for your patients. Whenever a patient makes a call for an appointment, the call center agent gives a time slot.

   This slot gets automate integrating the appointment system with the call y updated in the doctor’s calendar, making him well aware of the appointment.

   Besides slot booking, the integrated appointment system also enables the patients to cancel or reschedule the date as per their choice.

3. Setting reminders and confirmation –

   People like to get updated about the task they have actually done. Therefore, sending out a confirmation SMS or a mail immediately after scheduling appointment delights the patients a lot.

   Thanks to the healthcare support agents leveraging the omnichannel strategy. They are efficient at sending confirmation messages and reassuring them about their scheduled appointment.

   Apart from these, the customer support agents use the same channels to send reminders to the patients so that they don’t miss out on their pre-scheduled dates. Such an approach indeed generates better patient satisfaction.

Conclusion

Booking appointments is indeed a tiring job for the patients. However, a healthcare service provider can turn the job painless by outsourcing call center services.

Just look for an appropriate medical BPO company that has the potential to support the patients proactively and resolve their queries effectively. Undoubtedly, such agencies will help boost patient engagement and patient experience.