A well-run contact center is a key part of ensuring your patients have the supplies and information they need to support their health, as well as a crucial factor in growing your business. But how do you tell if a program is high quality?
There are several aspects you should consider when evaluating the quality of a contact center. In this blog, I’ll cover the basics to help you make better decisions about the right program to support your business.
There are several technology tools needed to build a high quality contact center, but a strong telephony system is really the foundation of a successful program. These systems should include an auto dialer, which lets you make multiple calls and prioritize those patients who need to be contacted first.
It’s also important to have a tool that delivers speech analytics. This means that calls are recorded, transcribed and analyzed to help evaluate both qualitative and quantitative metrics. From the qualitative side, speech analytics can help us learn a lot about the patient experience. Were they happy? Frustrated? Did they want to escalate an issue? On the quantitative side, we can determine whether we’re calling enough patients and securing enough orders to generate the revenue we need. Insights from both sets of data are important, because if a patient is satisfied and has good experiences with your contact center, the more orders they’re likely to place, helping boost revenue.
Workforce management and scheduling software is important, as well. It helps optimize staffing so we have the right people in the right places at the right times to handle both inbound and outbound call volume. A good workforce management tool will also offer visibility into whether schedules are being followed to support efficient work, to make sure your staffing model is fully optimized.
Having an easy-to-use knowledge base as part of your system is essential. Your contact center staff needs to be able to find accurate, up-to-date answers for your patients in a quick, efficient manner. A robust resource for educational and technical information helps your staff be successful on every call.
While having the right tools and technology is important, running a top-notch contact center also requires investing in your people. From hiring and training, to coaching and monitoring quality, taking the time to set your staff up for success is a great way to help your business and your patients.
In the customer service environment, one of the key things we look for at Brightree when we’re recruiting is the right personality. We’ve found that some of our most successful new hires have experience in the hospitality industry, which makes sense since there’s a lot of correlation between that industry and a contact center environment. Candidates need to be personable and warm on the phone, and they need to be ready for the pressures of the contact center experience, which is rigorous in the sense of needing to follow an exact schedule day in and day out.
A thorough, effective training program lays the groundwork for employee success. We’ve developed a two-week program. Week one is classroom training to make sure trainees understand their exact role, how to use the tools provided, the call flow, the details of the disease states their callers are managing, and the basics of successfully handling a call. Week two entails sitting with a trainer and other helpers to listen to, and eventually take, patient calls. Trainers support the new hire and give them real-time feedback while on calls to make sure they’re successful and gaining the necessary skills to work independently. And once someone is trained and successfully handling calls, we offer refresher training to help them focus on core skills and handle any changes or new requirements in the role.
Contact center managers should use an ongoing quality program to make sure expectations are being met both for patients and employees. The speech analytics tool described earlier can play a significant role in monitoring call quality. Our tool uses AI to search for keywords that provide insights into client experience. We can find interactions where patients were unhappy, or who needed more education, or look at what a team member did that led to better engagement and increased orders. This tool also gives contact center agents the opportunity to listen to their own calls and self-correct any areas needed, or hear which parts of a call are strong.
Ongoing support and leadership from your management team is the final element of a high-quality contact center. Not only should leaders communicate expectations and the standards for success, but they should also help remove roadblocks and make staffing or other adjustments as needed. A speech analytics tool can be used for coaching individually or to share examples of great work with the wider team. And successes—for both individuals and the team as a whole—should be recognized and celebrated.
A contact center that uses dedicated, trained professionals can be an HME agency’s “secret sauce” for improving patient satisfaction and boosting revenue. Brightree’s LiveCall has the specialized tools, software and training in place that lets you reap the benefits of a high-quality contact center while saving equipment and hiring costs.
Justin Lewis is the senior director of Brightree’s ReSupply LiveCall Service and brings nearly two decades of experience in the contact center industry to this role. Previously, he served as the senior manager of the contact center and outsourcing operations at a senior living facility and prior to that as a customer service and sales manager at Apria Healthcare. He is a Lean Six Sigma Master Black Belt.
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