The healthcare sector, now more than ever, should lead in modeling customer experience.
According to Forbes and Statista, healthcare is one of the top 5 industries known for poor customer experience. This is perhaps due to the high complexity and fragmentation of most businesses in this industry. But whatever the reasons could have been, the coronavirus pandemic seems to have further exacerbated these customer support challenges for healthcare businesses.
It’s now eight months since the first case of coronavirus was reported in Wuhan, China. As this crisis persists, the challenges facing the healthcare sector have increased, with many businesses struggling to adapt their services and operation to this reality, despite this sector being a very essential sector.
Current State and Challenges of the Healthcare Sector
COVID-19 has brought on a few challenges for the healthcare sector.
According to a publication in the Annals of Internal Medicine, one of these key areas is the disruption to healthcare supply chains. The already-frail system of this industry has been further exposed to more glitches by the ravaging coronavirus disease. As far as product needs in hospitals are concerned, the five most important products seem to be pharmaceuticals, medical devices, medical supplies, personal protective equipment, and blood. The problem is that while all of these are interconnected, problems or failure with any of these key supply chain areas will wreak further havoc on the entire system.
Boosting Healthcare Customer Service During the Pandemic
For hospitals, startups, and other players in the healthcare sector, the coronavirus pandemic has powerful and far-reaching implications that demand urgent action and attention. How can this be done? First;
It’s important to ensure avoid or reduce disruption to healthcare supply chains during this critical period. For example, the World Health Organization (WHO) recently warned that about 70 countries are now at severe risk of HIV-drugs shortage. If things like this are not quickly attended, then we’ll certainly be having more and more chaos to deal with. Secondly;
Improving customer service at this critical time will be key to staying afloat and driving growth for many businesses in the healthcare sector. Your patients are your customers and how you treat (literally speaking) will determine their patient/customer service experience. This means never giving in to disruptions or negative occurrences in each component of service that makes up the entire patient experience from patient scheduling to billing, and everything in between.
One Contact Center – Making Your Patients Happy Is Our Hobby
Along with quality medical care, caring staff, and a comfortable atmosphere, your patients demand exceptional professionalism, clear communication and accurate information, as well as the efficiency of processes in the entire service delivery. One Contact Center provides business support services for the healthcare sector.
OCC can help you handle this with well-trained and highly experienced customer service professionals that can handle patient scheduling, billing and claims, appointment check-ins and post-appointment follow-ups, among others.
The pandemic won’t suffice as an excuse for poor service delivery.
Learn more about improving your patients' and customers’ experience. Contact us today!
