How A Medical Answering Service Addresses Common Customer Complaints

A medical practice gives services to customers from all lifestyles. however, you have to be prepared to receive feedback regarding your service delivery. This feedback might be positive or negative. Positive reviews keep you motivated but negative reviews might make you lose focus and work schedule. You’ll have to seek immediate solutions to address all complaints while struggling to handle regular tasks at the same time. Fortunately, a professional answering service can help you address all customer service tasks while you focus on quality patient care. 

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Here’s a catch

Patients who aren’t satisfied with your service often fade away quietly without exploding. The answering service will make your patients happier leading to positive reviews. The agency has trained and experienced agents who empathize with patients while addressing their issues. With time, it eliminates the chances of losing customers who might end up leading negative reviews and taking business to competitors.  

Here are customer complaints the answering service will address 

Waiting for too long on the phone

When a patient calls your practice, they usually seek solutions to serious issues. You also can’t rule out a possibility of seeking assistance for emergencies. Therefore, making the caller wait for too long on the phone might cause frustration and anger. This might make the caller hand up and call another medical practice where they might get immediate assistance. Luckily, an answering agency has agents who are always available to pick up all calls to address customer issues in the best way possible. 

Lack of assistance during after business hours

As noticed earlier, callers to your practice usually have various reasons including seeking assistance for emergencies. Keep in mind that customers expect to reach your practice any time they have a burning issue that needs assistance. When they call your practice after business hours and don’t get assistance, the chances of calling another practice are high. To set your practice apart, it’s strongly recommended to outsource 24/7 medical answering service from a professional agency. Your practice won’t miss any calls regardless of whether it’s a holiday season, weekend, or after business hours. 

Not talking to a live agent

Using voice mail is another cause of anguish for callers to your practice. Customers appreciate talking to a live agent who empathizes with their conditions. Luckily, a professional answering service has agents that will always be available to talk to your callers. These agents are usually experienced and have the skills to handle patient issues. Your patients won’t even realize that they are talking to a third party employee. Access to a live agent who built rapport with callers will significantly encourage customer loyalty. 

Failure to schedule an appointment

A patient might call your medical practice to schedule, cancel, or reschedule an appointment. Calling your practice and failing to get appropriate assistance leads to frustration and anguish. A live answering service is a solution to avoid all this. The customer will be able to talk to the agent for matters regarding their appointment. This allows for efficient organization and proper time allocation for all different tasks. 

Poor response to patient issues

A medical practice handles a variety of patients and these might get overwhelming with time. This might make it impossible to respond to client issues  in a timely manner. Failure to address urgent issues in time is very disastrous to the client and your practice. The patient is likely to end up frustrated and more likely to call another practice. An answering service is a solution to allow timely response to patient concerns and keeping them updated on their pending issues. 

Patient complaints are sometimes unjustified and unreasonable but it’s very important to acknowledge them. afterward, you have to find solutions to long-term problems. Understanding complaints from unhappy patients is an opportunity to learn and improve services in your practice. It’s the time to reflect on where you went wrong and find a solution. Making effort to adjust, improve, and avoiding the issue permanently will lessen chances of the same problem happening in the future. 

Bottom line

Addressing common patient complaints is best handled by a professional answering service. This is a trick to offer a better customer experience to set your practice apart from the competition.