Case Study: How Custom Call Center Scripts Help
Company Background
One of the United States’ oldest pediatric hospitals, recently recognized by the News and World Report, and named one of Healthcare’s “Most Wired” for several years for their dedication to leading the way in children’s health through technology and innovative research, receives thousands of calls every day. Calls from worried parents concerned about their child’s health, to specialists looking to connect with other experts through the Physicians Priority Link. Managing all of these calls every hour of the day, 365 days a year, is the Customer Connections call center in the hospital’s Access Services Department. Customer Connections handles 850,000 calls annually from people nationwide—with as many as 4,500 calls in one day. With only six or seven operators on the phones at once, the Customer Connections call center must be highly efficient, organized, and accurate in order to route the calls to the right person immediately.
The Challenge
When a phone call is one of the first personal connections a patient makes with a hospital, the operator’s ability to handle the call professionally and accurately plays a large role in the patient experience. An individual operator averages 450 calls per day, with no two calls the same. This small but dedicated team handles several types of calls:
- general incoming calls to the hospital
- direct to department calls
- after-hours answering service, and physician-to-physician consults
- contacting the Medical Response team
The Customer Connections team at this hospital regularly creates custom scripts for the many departments whose calls they handle. With phone calls averaging 8-10 seconds, accurate and easy to follow scripts are essential.
The Solution
Call center leadership searched for a customizable software platform that would route calls, enable staff to edit scripting protocols, and provide ease-of-use and flexibility. They discovered that Amtelco’s communication software met all their needs.
Amtelco’s scripting software automatically detects call flow and determines the scripting options based on the hospital’s protocols. Their team is able to support each department and their specific need, while ensuring that the right information is gathered and communicated.
- Agent prompts, lookups, and navigation can be customized and built into database-driven call scripts that automatically guide operators through each call.
- The look and function of the attendant console is also customizable and various locations or departments can use different colors or layouts to aid in reducing communication errors.
- Color-coding helps agents instantly identify call types, and time-of-day and day-of week messaging and dispatching ensures the correct navigation script and dispatch options are displayed.
Customized scripts can be built for any type of call (even emergency situations) in as little as 20 minutes by using the drag-and-drop scripting tool and easily edits phone numbers, doctors’ names, and any other custom information as requested by the departments.
The Results
Scripts greatly reduce the time needed to train operators to answer and route calls for new departments. They also help operators manage tense situations, such as emergency calls, which helps the callers and operators feel more at ease, and ensures that Medical Response Teams receive sufficient information. Amtelco’s call scripting tool is easy to use so that staff with limited or no IS experience can use it. Keeping these scripts up to date helps reduce operator errors, improves efficiency, ensures professional call handling, and provides accurate information.
The manager of Access Services says, “We haven’t found another platform that does everything. It’ll route your calls—plus you can do scripting. The flexibility of the system is the beauty of it. Any time a department wants us to do anything and wants us to support them, we build a script. To me, the script is the best thing. It 100% keeps us from making errors.”
In support of this hospital’s vision to lead the nation in innovative technology and continued improvements in patient care, the Customer Connections department excels at answering and routing all calls correctly using Amtelco’s scripting software.