5 Ways To Improve Caller Experience At Your Medical Practice

Medical practices handle hundreds of inbound calls each and every day. According to the NHS’ 2021 GP Patient Survey, around two in three patients (67.6%) said it was easy to get through to their GP practice on the phone. With medical practices often having thousands of patients, that’s a lot of patients struggling to get through to your practice. Choosing a robust Medical Phone System is crucial to both your practice’s success and your patient’s satisfaction. In this short post, we’re going to outline 5 ways that your receptionists can improve caller experience at your medical practice… 

5 Ways To Improve Caller Experience At Your Medical Practice

01. Professional Call Queuing 

With medical practices receiving large volumes of calls, particularly at peak times, an effective call queuing system is crucial to make speaking to a member of your team a seamless experience. A good system not only places callers into a queue but alerts them where they are in the queue and plays pre-recorded messages to keep them entertained too. 

02. Computer Telephony Integration

If callers have spent a large amount of time on hold waiting to speak to a member of your team, being able to handle their enquiry quickly and efficiently is crucial to providing a good caller experience. With Computer Telephony Integration, your business phone is linked with your practice’s EMIS or SystmOne. This means that when a patient calls in, their file will automatically appear on your receptionist’s PC. This makes for seamless data protection confirmation meaning your staff can get straight to handling their enquiry. With the patient’s file open in front of them, your receptionist can also give any test results or other information to the patient with ease.

03. Advanced Call Recording

It’s impossible to physically oversee how every member of your reception team handles every call they make every day. With advanced call recording software, not only can you listen back to calls at any time, but you can listen back to them from anywhere. The software stores the recordings in the cloud meaning you don’t need to be in the practice to listen back to them. Use these calls to improve your team’s call handling and provide thorough staff training. Not only that, should a member of your team receive any sort of abuse, you can listen back to the call and take appropriate action. Enhanced team training makes for a better caller experience.

04. Bespoke Audio Messaging

Play bespoke messages to your callers whilst they’re waiting to get through or are on hold. Answer commonly asked questions, promote specific clinics and remind callers to book in for their vaccinations. Should your practice receive lots of the same questions, answering these in your audio messaging reduces the volume of calls your team has to handle. Simple questions about your opening hours can be answered by your phone system before a member of your team has even picked up the call. Provide an informative caller experience, all whilst your patients are waiting to speak to your team.

05. Auto-Attendant

When patients call into your practice, a well structured Auto-Attendant makes it easy for them to speak to the correct person the first time around. Also known as a digital receptionist, an auto-attendant greets your callers with an introductory message and then gives them a list of different options available. For example, the auto attendant could be as follows: ‘Press one to book an appointment, press two if your call is related to vaccinations and press three if your call is regarding prescriptions. For anything else, please press four.’ This means your patients won’t be stuck in call queues waiting for the wrong person only to be transferred to another queue. A simple-to-use Auto Attendant makes telephone communication a breeze.

All of the features mentioned in this post are available on our Medical Phone Systems. Yo Telecom handles over 40 million medical calls annually and has helped many medical practices increase their success. Interested in hearing more about our medical phone systems? Just enter your details in the form below and one of our communication consultants will be in touch to tailor a bespoke plan for your practice.