Home > News / PR > Hot Topics > 2/07/05 PR
Hot Topics - Financial Impact
How to Improve Your Contact Center’s Financial Impact
The Hot Topics page is your resource for Call Center publications and news
Anyone who has shopped online at Amazon® knows that selecting one book typically leads to a message about additional books that might interest the shopper. In healthcare, contact centers are learning to use the same principles.
Such capability elevates the contact center from a transactional channel to a transformational channel that offers more meaningful information and initiates ongoing dialogues. By transforming calls from one-dimensional to personalized interactions, the contact center, often an individual's first entry into a health system, can play a larger role in customer service, satisfaction, and organizational revenue.
Recently, HealthLine Systems and CPM Marketing Group, a healthcare Customer Relationship Management (CRM) leader, formed a partnership to help contact centers enhance revenue and return on investment. With years of experience and success in healthcare, both organizations have combined their expertise to anticipate individuals' needs, enhance calls with data, capitalize on follow-up opportunities, and measure resulting revenue from service utilization.
While technology is involved, the contact center's greater contribution as a key Customer Relationship Management (CRM) communication channel requires a change in philosophy -- an intentional shift from transactional to transformational interactions. How can organizations do this?
They can start by looking at the difference between contact center transactions and transformations as shown below, and making an intentional shift in interactions.
Shift from Transactions to Transformations
|
Transact |
Transform |
|
Results most important |
Relationship most important |
|
Goal is specific outcome |
Goal is trust, partnership |
|
Accommodates the relationship as necessary to achieve the outcome |
Accommodates the outcome as a consequence of the relationship |
|
People may feel used or manipulated |
People feel valued and appreciated |
Appropriate during a crisis;
evacuate a burning building |
Appropriate when not a crisis |
Example: Give verbal directions for
how to get to Obstetrics |
Example: Send detailed map, arrange for a volunteer to meet person
at parking garage, escort to Obstetrics to create a magic moment
|
Using Information to Increase Results
Once the contact center philosophy has changed, information and technology also play a role in increasing the contact center's versatility, value, and financial results. Catalog companies are masters at selling additional services during calls. Healthcare contact centers can utilize this technique with predictive modeling capabilities that allow call center agents to access HIPAA-compliant information to suggest appropriate clinical and educational resources for each caller. For example: if someone calls in for information on birthing services, the contact center can promote upcoming pregnancy and baby care classes. Likewise, when someone calls for a physician referral, the contact center agent can ask the caller if other family members need physicians as well, and provide suggestions as appropriate.
A call center agent also can use predictive segmentation systems, such as CPM's patent-pending Consumer Healthcare Utilization Index (CHUI)SM and the Patient Disease Index (PDI)SM, to pull up a caller's top health risks based on the likelihood that the individual will use certain services within MDC, DRG and ICD-9 codes. Along with geo-demography and other information, these scores provide an instant insight into customers' needs.
Post-Call Follow-up Opportunities and Measuring Results
The transformed customer interaction does not stop when the call is completed, but instead initiates the next phase of relationship management with post-call follow-up opportunities and measurement activities. These include continued communication with callers on relevant educational opportunities, new service and physician announcements, recommended screenings and immunizations, and information on topics of interest.
To track call center downstream activity, the organization can analyze contact center activity in the database including, the number of annual calls, type of calls (physician referral, general information, calls from specific campaigns), number of service encounters linked to calls, and the financial impact of those encounters.
When a Midwestern health center was under scrutiny to prove its contact center's value, it used its CRM system and database to illustrate that after 12 months the call center increased inbound calls by 10.8 percent, earned $1,395,856 in revenue from 817 new patients, and $22,363,800 in revenue from 4,160 existing patients for a total of $23,759,665 in revenue for the year.
Healthcare organizations that re-examine their contact center philosophy will find that changing the caller experience from transactional to transformational and capitalizing on post-call opportunities will improve patients' satisfaction and revenue. With Sharp Focus and a CRM database with predictive modeling capabilities, they'll also have the tools to prove it!
For more information about the HealthLine - CPM partnership, please contact HealthLine at
1-800-733-8737, Extension 7265 or
^Top