When You Don’t Know What You Don’t Know
Healthcare leaders cannot have a failed initiative. When scarce dollars are allocated for a strategic project, success is the only acceptable outcome, and your job and reputation are on the line.
Consider an organization that’s looking to open its own centralized contact center. There’s no question about the value to the organization—one point of contact, standardization, integration of services, improved efficiencies, and satisfied patients. It seems like a fairly simple task—hire some operators, buy some phones, rent space, and you’re ready to go live, right? Nothing could be more wrong! To ensure the success of this type of initiative, you must consider the unique knowledge base required and expertise of the people, processes, and technology needed. As leaders, we are at a disadvantage when we don’t know what we don’t know, and after funding has been approved, it’s best to seek the help of a call center industry expert to ensure that no time, money, or talent is wasted.
The success of a call centers hinges on the right mix of talent, logical processes, and intelligent technology. Labor costs are the greatest ongoing expense, so recruitment and hiring efforts must result in a workforce of bright, customer-focused, and sustainable employees. Retention is key, not only from a financial perspective but for growth and succession planning as the call center expands. Managers and directors should have approved track records of exceeding expectations, an understanding of your organizational goals, and the ability and desire to assemble and lead the team. Call Center consultants can work with you to create job descriptions that attract viable candidates and help you interview and hire team members who have a high probability for success.
The “Call Center process” is a phrase used synonymously with “call flow,” which is the route the caller will follow to achieve resolution of their issue One thing you don’t want is for the caller to feel like they are jumping through hoops—repeating the same information to different people and being transferred into a dark abyss. Experience in process optimization is crucial, so involve an expert to oversee the work of an integrated task force that is assigned the task to define your call center’s strategic expectations and what “success” will look like for your organization. If possible, assign roles and responsibilities to key stakeholders from the C-suite, operations, IT, human resources, compliance, finance, and nursing. A call center consultant should be able to engage the team in mapping the path the caller will follow in various situations.
The goal should always be to try to have a resolution provided by the first person the caller speaks with, and this “first call resolution” requires that front line staff have the knowledge and resources available to serve the caller’s needs. “First call resolution” is achieved with robust, dynamic, interactive training programs and tools, and setting the stage for your call center agents to succeed is your job as the organization’s leader. If you have limited experience in the world of call centers, collaborate with an expert to get it right the first time. The result will be a center that starts out on the right foot with you being credited with the accomplishment. The final, most unique and costly component of call center operations is the dedicated technology that will form the center’s infrastructure. Today’s market provides hardware, software, and applications that provide vast telephony capabilities, and it’s essential to define your organization’s requirements for the technology purchases that will be made. You need to have answers for questions such as those listed below.
· Does your organization want every call to be recorded? This is a common practice in medical call centers and is valuable from a risk management perspective and as a quality monitoring tool.
· What about Interactive Voice Response? “To hear this message in Spanish press #1.” or “To talk to a nurse press #2.” These voice responses support efforts to route the caller to the right person the first time.
· Have you ever heard of or do you know the terms “CRM,” “CTI,” “AWI,” “ASA,” “ABD,” “UTIL,” and AHA”? If you’re familiar with those contact-center-specific technology terms, that’s great!
Do your homework when choosing vendors and equipment because it can be costly if you don’t make the right choices at the beginning of the process. If you “don’t know what you don’t know,” consider bringing in an expert to educate you and your team. That expert can help you develop, design, and implement the emerging contact center and provide ideas that can mean the difference between success and failure. A good consultant takes the “training-the-trainer” approach when facilitating the “Go-Live” process and will step away after the team has some experience, confidence, and demonstrated successes.
Healthcare is multidimensional, and no one knows everything as there are so many specialty areas, so many subject matter experts, so many achievements and accomplishments, and so much to learn and gain. A courageous leader is the one who can seize the opportunity to admit that they don’t know what they need to know about call center operation. A humble leader is someone who knows enough to solve the problem and get the expected solution-based results by engaging a call center expert. Don’t risk finding out too late that you did not know what you did not know!
Gina Tabone
Gina Tabone MSN, RNC
Director of Strategic Clinical Solutions
TEAMHealth Medical Call Center
Gina_Tabone@teamhealth.com
http://www.thmedicalcallcenter.com/consulting/