Owners of medical facilities are always looking for options to cut costs so that they can save money over the course of months. The perfect scenario is when companies can cut expenses while also maximizing profits.
However, the one area of your business that you cannot afford to cut down on is customer service. By cutting down on customer service, it could negatively impact your businesses in more ways than one. Most importantly, cutting expenses that involve customer service could put the future of your business in jeopardy.
Fortunately, you can increase your customer service while saving money in the form of a physician answering service. An answering service can allow your staff to perform regular tasks without having to worry about attending phone calls that would otherwise interrupt their work. Call representatives will pick up the phone on your behalf, so they should be able to upgrade your customer service experience for your patients. The thing to note though is that not all answering services are the same.
Yes, answering services can vary based on pricing, features, and other things. Medical practices tend to want to look for the most affordable service in order to save the most money, however, this isn’t always the best idea. When you choose an answering service because it is cheap, there are many risks that could come with this decision.
Firstly, the quality of the service might dip compared to other answering services. The lack of quality in this regard might come in the form of missed or delayed calls, which would defeat the purpose of having the service in the first place. Secondly, the customer service might actually get worse compared to when you did not have the answering service. Thirdly, you could simply end up wasting a lot of time working with the answering service, whether setting the account up, working on a dispute, or trying to cancel your subscription.
With answering services, you get what you pay for. If you are able to get an incredible deal for a good answering service, consider yourself lucky, but we strongly recommend choosing the cheapest option.
However, there are ways in order to decrease how much you would pay for an answering service. You can first anticipate what you need from an answering service each month by determining how many calls you are expected to get. If you have a call volume that is rather high, expect to spend more on the answering service. With this in mind, look for how the call volume itself could be reduced while also not tampering with customer service.
Next, you can determine how long your calls typically get. The average call time for medical facilities is between 60 and 90 seconds. Like with call volume, you might have the chance to save money with your answering service by reducing the average call time that your business experiences.
When it comes to the answering services you are considering, you can do research on each answering service by comparing features, pricing, rates, and other aspects.
It is also worth looking into to prioritize answering services that do business in your specific industry. There are answering services for many industries such as in healthcare, but there are very few that are considered “one size fits all”. With this in mind, choose a service that knows your industry and its patients.
Summary
Answering services vary in features and pricing, but simply do not choose the cheapest service out there, or your customer service might suffer. There are many steps you should take to determine which answering service is the best one for you.