Hospitals are ignoring a major patient touchpoint for improving patient satisfaction. This touchpoint is also frequented by prospective patients and yet nobody knows if it is delivering a positive or negative experience.

1. What is the Business Reason for a
Hospital Call Center?
paul@palerhinoconsulting.com

2. Do not have a call center because you think you can manage
the customer/patient relationship—you cannot.
• Patients are issuing virtual RFPs and managing the relationship via Social-
CRM
• The call center is a major Patient Touchpoint
• A hospital’s best chance to improve satisfaction is to enhance the major
patient touchpoints (Call centers, Web Access, In-person).
• Hospitals manage it well by giving patients the information they want
when they want it.
Traditional CRM is Dead
A remarkable experience for every patient
every time on any device
(paulroemer@gmail.com)
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3. Most call center strategies are focused on the wrong things;
improving the efficiency of the call center, not on improving
its effectiveness. Typically the thought process is:
• Make the call center efficient—fast
• Efficiency lowers costs—enables more calls per hour and fewer employees
• Enable best practices. These metrics have nothing to do with resolving
why the patient called. Best practice metrics focus on minimizing these
metrics.
– Wait time before an agent answers
– Wait time before the patient abandons the call
– Percentage of abandoned calls
– Average call duration
• Following this philosophy, the best call centers are those that have been
closed—zero wait times
Typical Call Center Strategies
A remarkable experience for every patient
every time on any device
(paulroemer@gmail.com)
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4. Most call center strategies are designed to answer the most
calls with the fewest people.
• The fully loaded cost per call averages $25-$30.
• Call centers reduce the cost of each call by reducing talk time.
• Reducing talk time does nothing for call resolution—did the caller get
what was needed?
• If patients have to call more than once to get the right answer, the cost per
call doubles.
• If the patient talks to two people they get two different answers.
Typical Call Center Strategies
A remarkable experience for every patient
every time on any device
(paulroemer@gmail.com)
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5. Call centers should improve patient satisfaction. If they are
not increasing satisfaction, they are decreasing it. Patients
call to:
• Get an answer
• Deal with a complaint or problem
• Request something
Any answer, complaint, or request that cannot be met correctly, 100% of the
time, at a time convenient to the patient does not enhance the patient’s
satisfaction.
Why Have a Call Center?
A remarkable experience for every patient
every time on any device
(paulroemer@gmail.com)
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6. The call center should meet certain business goals including:
• Increasing patient satisfaction
• Reduce readmission and improve patient safety
• Reduced missed appointments
• Increase payment timeliness and amount
• Increasing Patient Retention, Referrals & ‘win-backs’
• Resolving complaints & disputes
• Increasing Patient Lifetime Value (PLV)
Why Have a Call Center?
A remarkable experience for every patient
every time on any device
(paulroemer@gmail.com)
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7. Every facet of the call center should be tailored at increasing
the satisfaction of an individual patient, not the efficiency of
the call—speed kills.
• Do the call center hours suit the needs of the patient?
• Do the agent’s responses meet the patient’s needs?
• Do all of the agents give the same response to the same question?
Why Have a Call Center?
A remarkable experience for every patient
every time on any device
(paulroemer@gmail.com)
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8. Call centers should have fewer calls over time.
• Patients call for a reason
• Hospitals should know by reason, why patients call
• Tracking the reasons patients call does not increase satisfaction
• Improving the processes that cause patients to call improves satisfaction
• Some calls can be served better by being offloaded to the web
Typical Call Center Strategies
A remarkable experience for every patient
every time on any device
(paulroemer@gmail.com)
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9. There are some call reasons for which the hospital wants an
patient to speak with an employee. There are other call
reasons that can be more effectively addressed via a ‘real’
website or patient portal.
• Offload to a patient portal call reasons that are transactional, repetitive,
and simpler to answer.
• Patients can get what they want, when they want it, and on whatever
device they want it.
Have The Call Center Do What It Does Best
A remarkable experience for every patient
every time on any device
(paulroemer@gmail.com)
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10. • Define a Global Patient Experience Strategy
• Learn why patients call
• Determine patients’ expectations of their calls
• Interview call center employees to determine what they need to create a
remarkable experience
• Determine what business problems you want the call center to address
• Create a call center strategy
• Determine if the current CRM can support the strategy
• Determine which call reasons would be better served via the web
Let’s Develop a Call Center Strategy Together
A remarkable experience for every patient
every time on any device
(paulroemer@gmail.com)
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