No one wants to call and then be put on hold especially when it’s a patient calling a medical practice. This can be disastrous in case of an emergency. Therefore, it’s imperative for medical practitioners to ensure that patients aren’t put on hold on calling the clinic or medical facility. It doesn’t mean managing who calls or when they call. The trick is to partner with a reputable medical answering service with agents who will ensure that it’s unnecessary to put callers on hold.
What happens during normal call answering?
Allowing the in-house staff to use the call juggling approach is disastrous for your medical practice. It’s not that easy to handle more than one caller at once. The receptionist will just end up putting callers on other lines on hold to answer the caller on the other line. By the time the receptionist finishes with one caller, the others on hold will have got too frustrated and hang up. This is not a desirable scenario for your patients.
The normal way of handling callers isn’t a good approach in modern times amidst stiff competition and fast-paced lifestyle. People just have a few minutes to spare calling the doctor to voice out their concerns. Making them wait for too long will just make them turn off the phone from frustration. This might make them switch to another medical practice. The worst part about call juggling is the possibility of mixing up patient stores.
Giving callers a better experience
The solution to enhancing caller experience in your practice is to get answering service for doctors from a professional agency. This is a fairer option for callers with fewer chances of errors and a significant improvement in call efficiency. A professional answering agency has agents who give every caller priority until their call is completed. The patient will have enough time to voice their concern since the agent won’t be rushing to move on to the next caller.
A doctor-answering agency applies a progressive approach to all patient calls. There’s always an agent to pick the patient’s call without putting them on hold. Agents from the answering agency are always available to attend to patient calls even after office hours. In case of an emergency, the call is forwarded promptly to the doctor for immediate assistance. This handy feature prevents patients from having to wait the next morning to get solutions to their problems.
Other expectations from an answering agency
Apart from ensuring that patients’ calls aren’t put on hold, entrusting professionals to handle our calls is a worthwhile investment. It comes with other benefits including:
- Bilingual agents
- Flat rate for services
- HIPAA compliance
- Medical answering specialty
Bottom line
A medical practice has to prepare for ways to ensure that all calls are answered with no need to put any caller on hold. Allowing your staff to handle your service calls isn’t a good idea. It comes with frustration, overworked staff, mixed up patient details, and putting callers on hold. The solution to avoid all this is collaborating with a professional answering service. This has enough professional agents to attend to patient calls without putting any caller on hold.
