Digital Workspace

Enhance the Patient Experience with Contact Center Transformation

A healthcare organization’s contact center can make or break that initial interaction with a patient. Stand out by providing a seamless customer experience.

Scott Merritt

Scott Merritt is a patient experience architect at CDW with more than 20 years of experience in the contact center space.

Ken Drazin

Ken Drazin is the head of customer experience at CDW.

It’s a familiar scene: A patient calls a health system for a specific need but first has to wade through an extensive menu of options. Then, when the patient dials to the right department, there may be added wait time or a redirection to yet another department. It can be a frustrating experience, and it can make patients reconsider whether they want to seek help from that health system or try a different one.

Outside of healthcare, people are having consumer experiences that are seamless, more direct and tailored to their preferences. When they use a mobile banking app, they can connect quickly with a service agent through a messaging function. When they shop online, they can receive step-by-step notifications about the shipment of their packages.

Health systems are learning that patients are looking for similar experiences from their providers. They want to schedule appointments and receive reminders more easily. They want answers to their billing questions, and they want access to their health information. It’s clear why 57% of healthcare leaders believe that improved consumer experiences are one of the top three ways their organizations will benefit from digital and IT investments, according to a 2024 survey from Guidehouse and the Healthcare Financial Management Association.

Click the banner below to freshen up your customer experience strategy.

xs_customerexperience_animated_Q324_clickfresh_desktop

xs_customerexperience_animated_Q324_clickfresh_mobile

The COVID-19 pandemic exposed the need to transform healthcare contact centers. Stories about people hearing a busy signal when trying to access information about testing and vaccinations were a necessary wakeup call for organizations to revamp their contact centers.

Contact centers play a pivotal role in connecting patients with the care they need. Here’s what healthcare organizations need to know about evolving their contact center strategies to improve the patient experience.

Challenges and Expectations for the New Healthcare Contact Center

Healthcare contact centers are distinct from other industries because they provide a vital link to lifesaving care. They need to be reliable and accessible around the clock.

Because patients often have to provide sensitive information, compliance and security are heightened concerns. Stringent adherence to HIPAA and other regulations add another layer of complexity to contact center strategies.

Integration with an organization’s electronic health records system is another critical requirement so that contact centers can leverage a patient’s data for more personalized communication, allowing an agent to deliver relevant information based on the patient’s needs. This integration is now table stakes for healthcare.

During the pandemic, healthcare organizations pushed to adopt cloud solutions for greater scalability and efficiency as a response to high demand that overwhelmed legacy contact center systems. At the same time, because a number of organizations were moving EHR systems into the cloud, it seemed relevant to also have their contact center in the cloud and to eventually operate in a single pane of glass.

Consider three areas of focus to elevate the customer experience for all.

Explore how to personalize customer experience with data and AI.

Review the answers to five questions about chatbots to improve the patient experience.

The Role of AI in Healthcare Contact Centers

Artificial intelligence is transforming contact center operations by better handling administrative tasks and call routing, allowing human agents to focus on interactions that require more empathy and complexity. This enhances workflow efficiency and improves the patient experience by reducing wait times and providing more personalized services.

For patient engagement, AI-powered features allow for proactive communication such as automated appointment reminders and pharmacy refills. AI-driven sentiment analysis also allows contact centers to gauge patient satisfaction and identify areas for improvement.

On the staff side, AI tools are increasingly used to summarize call interactions and analyze performance metrics, which refine agent training and improve overall service quality.

What a Modern Contact Center Means for the Future of Healthcare

A great example of a health system that is innovating its CX strategy is Tampa General Hospital, which consolidated its approach through the Experience Center, which it launched over a year ago. This centralized approach broke through the fragmentation that made their previous CX approach unwieldy. Now, Experience Center staff handle 30,000 calls per week, and the system has seen a 20% decrease in appointment no-show rates, a 47% increase in appointments scheduled online and a 75% increase in available appointments online.

Another example is a Wisconsin-based health system that wanted to address the issues of long hold times and abandoned calls in its contact center. The health system wanted to deliver an omnichannel experience and include self-service options through a chatbot and intelligent voice assistant. Integrations with the EHR offered appointment and bill payment reminders sent via text message. The health system has now seen abandoned calls drop to below 5%; more than 20% of interactions are handled through self-service; and 80% of calls are answered within 30 seconds.

UP NEXT: Three trends in healthcare contact centers that can improve patient experience.

These examples show that healthcare organizations can transform their contact center operations, which are part of an industrywide shift intended to better support patients on a continuum of care. As the tools and processes for the contact center continue to mature, organizations can plan for more patient engagement initiatives such as texting care reminders or offering personalized check-ins so that patients feel cared for outside of hospital walls.

Healthcare organizations don’t have to undergo these changes alone. Just as people turn to specialists for health needs, organizations can find a partner with extensive expertise in CX that can help fine tune a new strategy. CDW, for instance, offers managed services, workshops and strategic consulting engagements that can help organizations define their consumer journey and realize their vision for a better patient experience.

This article is part of HealthTech’s MonITor blog series.