Responsible AI is Key to Protecting Patient Relationships

Healthcare systems in the U.S. have come a long way in improvements in technology to manage patient scheduling, communications and related activities. But there’s still a lot of room to grow. And, in some cases, the use of tools such as AI and automation within customer service are introducing both benefits and new barriers to building strong patient relationships.

In the highly personal and complex world of healthcare, being able to communicate with a human representative can help patients feel comfortable and secure in their choice of healthcare partner. But at the same time, healthcare companies are pressured to increase efficiencies and productivity, and decrease costs. 

They face a dilemma: shift customer engagement further toward technology-driven interactions—sacrificing the human element—or find a responsible balance where the right technologies drive efficiency, using human engagement to reinforce personal relationships and add value to interactions. 

Envisioning the future of CX in healthcare

One of the biggest frustrations for healthcare patients is customer service and support. In fact, a recent survey by The Harris Poll shows that many adults feel that current healthcare systems fail to meet their needs in some way – for example, taking too long to get an appointment. One way healthcare systems have been trying to solve this is through self-service AI-driven chatbots. But this too, presents a challenge. 

Chatbots, both pre-programmed and generative AI-driven, are becoming more commonplace in healthcare, and research shows that 40% of consumers are open to either chatbot or human interaction, as long as they are receiving the help they require. But still, an equal percent of people feel “unfavorable” toward bots. There are varying reasons for this, including a general mistrust of AI or bots, a feeling that the AI won’t be able to reliably address the patient’s needs, and past experiences where the bot was perceived to have failed. 

Additionally, many customer service providers are using automation and AI chatbots incorrectly, forcing patients into a broken process that makes it difficult to exit the system and reach a human agent. These experiences only serve to create more negative feelings and unhappiness. 

Compounding this issue is that healthcare support can be highly nuanced, and despite technological improvements, chatbots still lack contextual and conversational intelligence. This places a limitation on many patient interactions that require human intelligence and engagement to solve complex questions. 

Finding the Balance

We need to think differently about how AI and human agents are used in the greater context of healthcare customer experience. A new approach—responsible AI—is designed to build trust in AI technologies by aligning responses with societal values and ethical standards by offering human oversight. 

Rather than rely on a one-size-fits-all approach to bots, we need to define exactly where bots add value and exactly where humans add value, based on how customers interact with their healthcare system. 

This missing element—the balancing of the two—can significantly improve performance of both technology and humans to optimize every interaction, increase efficiencies and productivity, and decrease costs. In the process, we can also improve the role of the agent and create a better experience for the patient. 

An example scenario is this: A patient calls and gets immediate assistance from a human who evaluates the patient request and decides if and how AI can be used to streamline the interaction. For most situations, the agent can then hand off the caller to a bot to gather patient data, move an appointment, pay an invoice or handle other simple tasks. This human-first approach sets the stage for responsibility—the patient feels respected, and the agent makes better use of the caller’s time by shifting them to automation only when it makes sense to do so. 

This process of agent involvement and AI hand-off also frees up agent time to work on more complex requests requiring the human touch. It allows agents to “own” more than one interaction at a time because they can engage with new callers while AI is handling the details. AI can also automate data capture and recording, reducing administrative work that adds little value to the customer experience. 

Importantly, not all interactions will end with AI. A critical step in this balance is the ability to switch the patient back to an agent very quickly if they encounter an issue. This requires agents to have visibility into AI transactions and data so they, or another agent, can easily step back in and support the caller, effectively picking back up where they left off in the conversation. 

The future of customer experience is both balanced and responsible, offering the best human and AI-driven interactions, creating happy outcomes for all.