The overwhelming majority of patients (75 percent) report using a customer call center to interact with their health system. Even though the call center is responsible for handling numerous customer touchpoints, many hospitals still provide experiences that are about as appealing as calling a cable company.

Within these interactions, patients must cope with long wait times and multiple transfers, and call center agents that subsequently have no background information on them or their unique situations. This impersonal form of engagement allows health systems to handle a high volume of call center interactions, but not provide the quality patients are looking for; poor call center interactions fail to deliver any strategic value, provide cross-sell opportunities, or extend patient lifetime value.

A call center equipped with HCRM capabilities, or an Engagement Center, allows call center agents to provide convenient service that supports marketing and business development initiatives, streamlines workflow, and improves patient engagement and satisfaction. Engaging patients through a CRM-enabled call center allows health systems to take advantage of patient data, thus providing proactive and personalized interactions that keep customers happy, healthy, and in-network.

Let’s take a closer look at how a proactive engagement strategy can help improve the call center experience:

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When we talk to organizations about their healthcare call center, we hear about the following challenges:

• Operates in a silo: Marketing has little visibility into how the call center is contributing to lead-to-patient conversions and/or revenue. This makes marketing attribution and proving ROI difficult.
• Agents aren’t able to be proactive: A customer on the phone is an opportunity to provide value and excellent customer service, but agents don’t have the information necessary to proactively engage with customers efficiently and effectively.
• Unable to integrate with marketing campaigns: Activating the call center as an optimized channel for patient engagement means the ability to field inbound calls and incorporate targeted outbound calling initiatives.
• Disconnected patient journeys: Patient acquisition and retention is a multi-channel journey and the call center needs to be integrated as a key part of marketing initiatives.
• Lacking efficiencies – Agents are using up to 10 different applications and tools while managing a call and trying to stay focused on giving the patient an exceptional patient experience.
• Unable to show value – Call centers aren’t able to track the activities and metrics that contribute to the revenue for the health system. This results in the call center being classified as a cost center and not a revenue center.

Outside of an appointment or physical visit to a hospital, the call center is the one channel that provides a clear one on one personal connection between a hospital and a customer.

As healthcare organizations work to improve their customer experience across the board, the call center needs to be a key part of those efforts.

However, transformation of a healthcare call center takes time, money, and executive buy-in. At the heart of it, it’s about integrating the call center’s contributions into the greater marketing strategy through an HCRM-enabled engagement center solution.

To convince leadership teams of the need to transform the healthcare call center, here are four compelling benefits:
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