Selecting an Answering Service for your Hospice or Palliative Care Company

Perhaps one of the single most important decisions hospice & palliative care company mangers must make is what type of after hours emergency system to install to ensure after hours emergencies are handled professionally, quickly, and correctly. Nothing is more troublesome than an an after hours care provider who gets continual complaints about its rude operators, is slow to get out emergency calls, and takes incorrect information from callers. Such call centers routinely frustrate hospice employees and irritate managers. For hospice managers to retain some level of sanity, a telephone answering service should be able to provide courteous operators, get emergency calls out with in an acceptable time period, and collect the correct information from patients. In this article, we will examine key success factors that will ensure future contact with call centers is a positive experience.

Telephone Answering Service & Hospice Key Success Factors

• Become familiar with the capabilites of the call center or telephone answering service.
• Proper design & incorporation of the answering service into hospice operations and daily routines.
• Maintain consistent contact with the telephone answering service manager(s).
• Ensure quality controls are in place for both companies.
• Always have backup plans in place for the unforeseen.

Let's take a look at each of the above facets indvidiually:

The Hospice Needs to Become Familiar With the Capabilities of the Telephone Answering Service

A telephone answering service is a cost effective way to provide around the clock coverage for companies who can't afford or choose not to staff personnel 24/7/365. It is a conglomeration of companies, while at the same time being a single entity. In fact, being a telephone answering service operator is very stressful at times. Imagine trying to keep hundreds, if not thousands, of business' customer relations in tact while following the individual wishes of each customer. Technology has played a huge roll in simplifying the process for telephone answering services, but the processes involved can still retain certain degrees of difficulty. Call centers today are not the messaging centers they were 10 years ago. Advancements in online integration, appointment setting, call scripting, database and web integration, are the tip of the iceberg when it comes to the capabilites of the modern call center. A call center truly can be a virtual receptionist or secretary for doctor or medical related companies. Today's call centers incorporate a number of features to make the lives of their customers much less cumbersome than before. This is not to say that call centers rid themselves of all the skeletons in their closets. Call center capabilities will come close, but never equate to hiring your own employee. A call center manager can not listen to every single call that comes in as they come in. Thanks to call recording, they can listen to potential problem callers or employees and rectify situations, but ONLY if it is brought to their attention. Spot checks can catch a problem here or there, but unless the customer brings a problem with a caller to the manager's attention, very little can be done to curb the situation from happening again. This is a key limitation of call centers and why one of our key success factors is good communication between tas managers and hospice manager. To give you a better understanding of some of the capabilities of today's telephone answering services, below are just a few of the features the most modern call centers provide:

• Call Scripting or Tree Scripting - Very similar to a flow chart, the programmers at the call center can design a custom solution that collects the exact information your company is looking for. Tree scripting takes this a step further. The process of gathering the caller's information can be equated to a tree gathering water. It flows in through the different branches and heads to the roots, where the roots decide how to store the water and how to use it. The "roots" are the latest innovations to call centers, where before you merely had the trunk and branches gathering information. Now call centers, based on criteria given to them by customers, can disseminate information to the proper person automatically by customized programs that recognize the input of the operator, and route the call to a proper person. For instance, if a hospice classifys certain types of calls as an emergency, and they want those types of calls paged out to the on call immediately, the system will automatically send out a page or text message if the operator puts in a specific set of information. The call response time is literally 0 seconds. Call back times important for state rating purposes are easily and quickly met. On top of that, the system can tell the operator which on call to contact, on what means to contact them (digital page, alpha page, email, text message, telephone, fax, etc) to ensure the message was received. Modern call centers, such as Answerphone of America, allow Hospice customers to maintain their on calls, backups, and on call admins via the web. Once the on call is updated via the web, the system which controls who the operator calls is instantaneously updated as well, reducing the possibility of the operator contacting the wrong on call at 2am. Tree scripting is just one of the ways to ensure hospice patients receive the absolute best care.

• Call Recording & Playback - Recording telephone calls is nothing new, finding the calls, however, is! Modern call centers and telephone answering services can, within a matter of moments, find a questionable call where an issue with a customer may have arisen. For instance, a wrong phone number. The call center should be able quickly pull up that call, listen to the message, and give you the correct phone number. Nothing is more crucial than correct information when an emergency takes place. If a problem does take place, you need a back up plan to get the correct information. Whether that is an online database of current patients that the on call can quickly refer to, or a call recording system at the answering service - the modern call center should provide you both!

Proper design & incorporation of the answering service into hospice operations

With any telephone answering service, there is always a "growing pains" period. A period where the account is tweaked and formated differently from the original setup to customize the account to the hospice's specifications. Coordinated design, thorough planning, and proper implementation will ensure this "growing pains" period will be minimalized. Directors of hospice & palliative care companies should realize there is significant advantage to going with a call center that has a strong record of supporting hospices in the past. This concept can be equated to an author writing an article. Rather than creating an entirely new article, simply take a previous article and change a few of the words. This helps to minimize the "growing pains" period and can nullify it. A company that has no other hospice or palliative companies or has a poor record of service with them will most certainly cause headaches during the first few months of service. Experience for an call center is a must. Call centers who specialize in serving hospice's is even better.

Maintain consistent contact with the telephone answering service manager(s)

A lasting business relationship should be formed between the managers of the two organizations. The best call centers recommend contact between the telephone answering service and hospice managers at least 1 time per month. Organized conference calls will keep both sides abreast to happenings with the account. Everything from live operator time efficiency, operator voice and tone quality, problem calls/callers/operators can be reviewed, as well as reviewing the hospice's own employee response times is very beneficial to providing top quality care. Communications between the two companies is essential to providing patients with the care they require.

Ensure quality controls are in place for both companies

Coinciding with the previous paragraph, when you do confer with you answering service managers, you'll want to make sure both sides are meeting proper goals. In other words, did the hospice employees return their pages within 5 minutes. Did the call center employees get the calls out within 5 minutes. Did operators score above nominal service levels for voice quality, tone, following directions, etc. All are goals that must be met to provide patients with the care they require.

Always have backup plans in place for the unforeseen

Some things can be planned for, others can't. Storms or telephone line problems can be planned for. If an entire telephone switch station goes down (ie regional telephone routing is down), well, you can't! Back up plans for call centers should include redundant phone lines, power sources, and computer systems. Contingency plans should be in place for the account itself as well. Who to contact if there is ever a question of who might be on call or the on call list hasn't been updated. Most things can prevented, and with proper planning, no interruption in service should occur. The organizational skills of your call center will dictate whether they are prepared or not.

Conclusion

Selection of an answering service can be a complicated process. Finding an answering service that provides all of the above services for a competitive rate, such as Answerphone of America, can be a time consuming process. It is recommended that you design a checklist and order the above key success factors in order of importance. Then call a telephone answering service representative and see what type of service offerings they have.

To reach a sales representative for Answerphone, please click here or call 800-308-3387.