Why call centers are disliked by patients

Photo: Arlington Research

Call centers have been widely used in the field of healthcare for quite a long time. However, although they are used extensively, patients around the world have reported negative connotations and overall, generally dislike call centers. Why is this the case exactly and how can you improve your communication with your patients? Well, in this article, we are going to take a look at a few key reasons why call centers are disliked by patients. Additionally, we will explore new, alternative ways of establishing communication with your patients instead of using call centers. Let's get right into it.

The pitfalls of call centers

Overall, call centers can be used to answer clients' or patients' questions. Typically, however, this is not really the most pleasant or enjoyable experience. Generally speaking, there are two ways of setting up a healthcare call center. They can be in-house and outsourced. However, nowadays, there are countless digital platforms and channels that have increased customers' expectations and ways of communication. Therefore, call centers, although still crucial in many healthcare facilities around the world, are becoming more and more obsolete as patients are being introduced to new means of communication through digital platforms and services. So, let us first take a look at some of the key problems patients have with call centers, and why these call centers are disliked by patients.

The menu

Phone menus are hated and disliked by many. If a caller wants to connect to an agent through a call center, they wish to do it right away and access their healthcare services and the needed information. However, the phone menus with automated voice before that tend to be hard to navigate, and have lengthy prompts that are hard to follow. This is why a poorly designed phone manu can truly annoy patients. They can then act in a hostile manner by the time they reach an agent.

Switching from an agent to agent

Being switched from one agent to another is quite often when using call centers. Perhaps an agent cannot answer the question or the patient entered the wrong queue, either way, the process of switching from an agent to agent is long and unanimously disliked by patients. The waiting times in between alone can drive your patients straight into frustration.

Lengthy hold times

If a call center is forcing patients to wait for a long period of time, the truth is, there is no way to avoid frustration. Patients prefer instant access to the information needed for their healthcare journey. Timely information is invaluable when it comes to healthcare. A call-back solution to your call center may fix the issue for some, but overall, *patients will be frustrated with lengthy hold times.

The agents themselves

A key feature of a successful call center is well-trained professionals who know their tasks and are ready for any kind of question. Patients can be very different. Each patient requires a different kind of health service or information. Therefore, it is crucial that all operators working in call centers are highly trained. However, this is not always the case. Call centers that use agents that are unprepared and have not been properly trained may only add to the frustration of patients. Language barrier problems also come into play. If a patient from particular geography contacts your outsourcing partner from another, the issue of language barriers may arise. Your patient can be left upset and frustrated because of misinterpretation and miscommunication. What's worse, as mentioned above, timely and accurate info is always needed in healthcare, and this is not possible if there is a language barrier between a caller and an agent.

Continuing on with the agents that work in call centers, patients can also run into another issue that is related to the way or manner in which they are spoken to by the agents. This also comes down to the agents' training. However, if not trained properly, a lack of devotion while managing multiple different clients can arise. This can result in a very tiring conversation that does not really feel emphatic towards the patient who is calling. So, when you outsource to a third-party provider, their agents divide their time to manage clients of various different needs and the 100% devotion to each patient may not be present.

New ways of communicating with patients

Now that we have covered all of the different key reasons why patients dislike call centers, let us take a look at some new, innovative alternative solutions to call centers. With the constant rise of technology and digital platforms, healthcare services providers around the world are now capable of providing a more efficient and closer means of communication with their patients. Using new digital services backed by powerful software and AI, healthcare service providers can establish new ways of communicating with patients that are accurate, fluent, and timely. For example, a proactive confirmation service can do wonders with patient satisfaction. The waiting times are instantly reduced. The patient receives on their phone or computer all of the necessary information about shifts, schedules, appointments, and rescheduling options as well.

When backed by a proprietary natural language processing engine, built 100% to manage health interactions, healthcare service providers can achieve new, more effective ways of communication with their patients through digital platforms. Furthermore, patients will receive a more personal tone that relates to them and they will be the main focus of each interaction. Getting the right information through the use of various platforms such as E-mails, WhatsApp, and others, patients can gain instant, 24/7 access to communicate with their designated healthcare services providers. All of this greatly impacts patients' healthcare journey and improves their relationships with healthcare services providers. As you can see, digitalization is slowly taking over the field of healthcare as well, and call centers, with all of their problems, are slowly becoming obsolete.