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Five Communications Best Practices - Hospital Call Center Automation

Article Summary: Let's take a look at how implementing five communications best practices, all tied to call center automation, can help save money, improve efficiency, enhance employee morale and even save lives.

Five Communications Best Practices -Hospital Call Center Automation

Let's take a look at how implementing five communications best practices, all tied to call center automation, can help save money, improve efficiency, enhance employee morale and even save lives.

#1 - It all starts here -- call center automation.

Healthcare institutions depend on their call centers to help manage the peaks and valleys of incoming emergency and non-emergency phone calls they receive every day. With an effective call center automation program, you can avoid the high numbers of abandoned calls and frustrated customers that can affect patient care, aggravate staff and have a negative impact on your hospital's reputation. When you automate, you can consolidate, make better use of call center staff and decrease the number of operator assisted calls. Of course, call center automation is not without risks - it's important to ensure that the human element is at the heart of your communications network.

# 2 - Consolidate and reorganize your hospital call center.

With a savvy consolidation and reorganization plan, you can reward agents who process calls quickly, improve your answering service standards and otherwise optimize the efficiency of your processes . Best of all, there are many ways to approach your optimization efforts. Today's integrated call center suites allow a customized, phased improvement process, ranging from simple "fine tuning" to major overhauls.

# 3 - Select superior call center technologies.

If your call center infrastructure is outdated, improvements in call handling can be difficult, results can be unpredictable, patient care can be affected and staff morale can be at-risk. Choosing from among the plethora of options - such as voice recognition, calendar management, call statistics, performance management, learning options for new hires and the like can be difficult, even for technology veterans. But the rewards of good tech integration can be staggering. Consider that Emory University's healthcare network recently adopted a series of new tech apps which boosted call answering speed by 44%.

# 4 - Implement new and better processes.

New concepts in network communication and performance management seem to arrive on the scene every week. The best call center tools provide data that managers can use to quickly develop improvement plans, measure their success and enhance operations on a continuous basis. Stay appraised of these and other concepts to improve productivity in areas such as call speed, connected calls, staff attendance, network off-line time and others.

# 5 - Work to create a cohesive, committed call center team.

Prove that you truly value your employees by working to create career growth, training and advancement opportunities. Simply acknowledging the work of your call center employees can boost morale and improve caller's impressions of your service. These and other best practices can also improve your processes and elevate the reputation of the group within your organization. Invest in the best tools, provide better training, find good employees, and ensure that your managers are effectively motivating your people as well as learning from and supporting their innovation. "Bottom-up" insights from employees can be often applied to your call center processes to great effect.

To get started, Amcom Software can help you understand your options, consult with your staff on technologies to improve your processes and help ensure that you're looking in all the right places for improvement. Visit amcomsoftware.com or call 1-800-852-8935.

Article Source: http://www.upublish.info

About the Author:
Debbie Everson
Bryan Mitchell, Business Solutions Advisor Amcom Software - Amcom Software is the leading provider of mission-critical communication software, with more than 1000 customers in healthcare, hospitality, government, F1000 and education.