Customer Support in the Healthcare industry simply means taking care of your customer with politeness. In the healthcare industry patients don't want to be treated as customers, they want to feel safe while getting treatment in the hospital. In this blog we will go through how we can improve customer support for your hospital and how it will be beneficial for your hospital.
Healthcare industries excel in customer service delivery. Friendly acts and constructive daily dialogue between employees and patients make healthcare organizations well known for providing top-tier care. In order to deliver outstanding customer service in healthcare organizations, organizations need to stop considering patients as customers who exist only to generate sales for them - instead they should see patients as individuals whom your business exists to assist - this will create the first step to providing superb service delivery.
A shift to patient-centric healthcare approaches has occurred quickly in response to COVID-19 pandemic's effect on consumer attitudes toward healthcare facilities and medical practitioners, including virtual doctor consultations and telemedicine practices quickly expanding with patient safety as an objective in mind. A PwC report on global healthcare trends stated that 91% of consumers said they plan on using video virtual clinical care again in future; at the same time CDC observed 154% increased utilization for Telehealth during March of the same year as opposed to the same period of last year.
What Is Hospital Customer Service?
Hospital customer service refers to the assistance and consideration given by hospitals to their patients. Although patients who use hospital services might not typically consider themselves customers, they still deserve high levels of customer care in this environment. Hospital customer service training should take place due to these interactions being sensitive in nature - doing this ensures clients can access higher-quality assistance during difficult times.
Why Customer Service Is Important To Healthcare Companies
Customer service plays a pivotal role in any industry; due to the following importance of customer support in healthcare, it stands apart and crucial from other industries.
- Customer service experiences set the expectation for the quality of care: Even with the highest-caliber physicians and nurses on board, patients won't trust your medical expertise without receiving consistently exceptional experiences from every interaction they have. Instead of treating every transaction as simply another one-off transaction, healthcare organizations should aim to form lasting relationships with their patients.
- Happy patients are likely to return to the same doctors, clinics, and facilities for all their healthcare needs: Contented patients are far more likely to refer their friends, family and coworkers to healthcare organizations they feel satisfied with. Strong doctor-patient relationships begin with outstanding customer service - even though this form of customer loyalty might not always be readily recognized or acknowledged within any particular industry. Patient satisfaction will ultimately depend upon how good or poor medical customer service your organization provides - regardless of any formal recognition from outside parties.
- Bad data can lead to life-threatening mistakes: Healthcare relies heavily on accurate patient data in order to advise a course of treatment, making errors or missing documentation of essential nature detrimental to customer service standards and even potentially leading to malpractice claims and potentially deadly mishaps. Employee diligence as well as customer service systems and procedures established should help guard against costly mistakes that result from expensive mistakes.
- Poor customer service is an indicator of bigger problems: Customer service performance can often be seen as an indicator of deeper issues within an organization. A company with well-developed and efficient procedures and systems often delivers outstanding customer service while poor providers often struggle with staff training issues, data quality concerns and inefficient processes that have an adverse impact on operating costs as well as patient care costs.
Why Customer Service Is Important To Patients
Consumers generally do not use healthcare services when they are feeling well; when illness or injuries strike they turn to organizations and individual providers in order to obtain assistance for themselves or another. Unfortunately health conditions often result in stress; interactions between patient service staff members and those suffering can often become challenging due to patient worries about both finances and physical wellbeing.
Patients want care when engaging with healthcare organizations, not simply treatment. More than anything, patients want the people working within those healthcare organizations to demonstrate throughout every encounter that they care for their individual's needs, circumstances and overall well-being.
What Are The Consequences Of Poor Customer Service In Healthcare?
The Impact On The Purchasing Process And Inquiry Calls
Customer service agents play an essential role in turning prospects into paying customers, with 84% of healthcare marketers reporting higher average order values (AOV) and conversion rates via phone calls than other forms of engagement such as advertising or direct mailings. Furthermore, 76% of patients admit calling healthcare providers when seeking care - this often happens for additional information regarding services and ordering processes.
Patients prefer speaking directly with someone over giving private medical information online, which is another reason they call. Customer service agents provide great assistance at this initial questioning stage of the patient journey cycle; inadequate customer service could result in decreased revenue as patients who call to make appointments may choose not to come back if their experience was negative or unpleasant.
Potential patients becoming frustrated while trying to schedule appointments can be extremely unpleasant experiences. Research suggests that one third of callers placed on hold hang up within five minutes; therefore a single poor customer service experience could potentially cost your practice one third of its leads.
The Connection Between Personalization And Patient Loyalty
Finding new patients in healthcare's ever-evolving industry can be an ongoing struggle, particularly among retail clinics and urgent care centers that serve a wider population of healthcare consumers. Mergers and acquisitions frequently pair expanding facilities against smaller practices for clinical purposes. Competing for new business is necessary; however, building loyalty among current ones has many advantages; new clients cost five times more to attract.
Customized experiences can enhance customer acquisition and retention simultaneously. Offering tailored patient experiences within healthcare is crucial to providing superior customer service; without them you risk alienating over 47% of the public from choosing your services.
An essential step toward optimizing patient experiences is segmenting patients based on their needs. Psychographic and demographic segmentation technology plays a pivotal role.
Dissatisfied Customers Directly Impact Your Bottom Line
An average American spends more than $10,000 annually on healthcare costs, so revenue loss from absentee or lost patients could quickly accumulate. Furthermore, hospitals that deliver "excellent" patient experiences see net margins that are 50 percent greater than hospitals providing "average" experiences - this indicates to healthcare professionals the importance of considering all elements that influence an optimal patient journey experience.
Hospitals reported an average increase of 0.2% per point increase in patient satisfaction; when critical access hospitals were excluded from this dataset, this margin rose two-fold - without patient-centric cultures in place, hospitals cannot meet HCAHPS or revenue targets effectively.
Experts estimate that one unresponsive ER nurse could cost your facility as much as $250,000 in lost revenue due to poor customer service. Your bottom line could suffer significantly as a result of inadequate customer care; for every patient who complains directly to staff there will likely be several who remain silent and never return; while social media makes patient complaints much more likely.
Reviews can have a direct effect on the chances of your practice attracting new patients via provider searches conducted online, and negatively influence new patient recruitment efforts.
Tips To Improve The End-To-End Customer Experience In The Healthcare Industry
Customer service in healthcare extends well beyond exchanges between patient and provider; there are multiple touchpoints between these interactions which comprise their end-to-end patient experience, giving businesses ample opportunity to influence customers' perception of quality care received at each encounter.
Following is an overview of key tips to healthcare customer experience, along with suggestions to make them even better.
Discovering Healthcare Products And Services
Finding and selecting goods and services a patient requires is the foundation of customer experience. Many consumers research healthcare options available to them by reading reviews, adverts, recommendations from friends/family/providers etc and making informed choices based on these comparisons.
Scheduling Appointments
Setting an appointment with a healthcare provider is often the first active interaction a patient has with healthcare business, providing vital data regarding his or her medical needs and creating the opportunity for healthcare providers to assess urgency by setting an appointment time slot for you.
Appointment Check-In Process
Initial interactions between patients and healthcare organizations often begin when patients check-in for either an appointment or walk-in visit, where their first impression of it often includes its atmosphere, staff friendliness and check-in procedures' efficiency. Patients typically form perceptions based on these aspects as they fill out health questionnaires prior to seeing providers; their perception may also depend on how fast the data collection process goes by how difficult the data collection process might be for each provider they see during this first encounter with the organization is perceived by its patient base.
Service Delivery Experience
As scheduled, a patient begins receiving services from their healthcare provider at their scheduled time. Without question, this encounter with customer service stands out the most of all for patients. Unfortunately, healthcare professionals - physicians, nurses, technicians and dentists alike- often underestimate its significance; improving and enriching customer experiences are of utmost importance in healthcare services delivery experiences.
Continuation Of Care
Healthcare encounters frequently necessitate multiple tasks and appointments for an overall experience to take place successfully. Healthcare providers may need to ask patients back for follow-up appointments or refer them elsewhere for treatment; patients' experiences don't just consist of single visits - overall impressions form their basis of opinion about healthcare providers.
Conclusion
An innovative healthcare service provider knows no bounds when it comes to improving patient experiences - from integrating technology at every customer touchpoint, to offering every patient superior levels of care and empathy - nothing is off-limits when it comes to creating exceptional patient journeys. Every industry relies on exceptional customer service - but few industries need it as much as healthcare does. So go ahead, give your patients what they deserve in terms of care.
