Vision of a Centralized Call Center
Do you work for a doctor like mine?
You know, the go-getting, risk-taking visionary kind.
We’ve learned to let him get his ideas out on the table because that’s what visionaries do. They have so many thoughts racing through their head, but they don’t always know how to put them in play.
One of those ideas was to have a centralized call center for our five practice locations. When I heard his vision, I knew I wanted to be a part of establishing this for our company.
Establishing a Thriving Service Center
Years ago, I worked in telemarketing and oversaw a large call center, so I offered to take on this project confidently.
I started my dental career over 19 years ago as an assistant and worked my way up into my current role as Director of Operations. My passion has always been patient-centered excellence. I want to share nine things we did to establish a thriving patient service center.
Any administrative team member in a busy dental practice will tell you multitasking in the office can be difficult. Checking in patients, auditing your schedule, answering questions for your staff, being on hold with insurance companies, and not to mention the constant phone ringing were overwhelming to even our seasoned employees. While we wanted the phones to be ringing, we also realized it turned our attention away from our patients entering our practices.
We wanted patient experience to be a top priority, and this area kept coming up in discussions with our practice managers at our weekly meetings. We need to address these areas to offer better support to them. Our provider’s vision of a centralized call center made perfect sense.
Setting Up the Call Center
I found a site for our call center in a small town away from all our practice locations. We rented the space and started work on getting things set up. Our networking company was terrific at helping us with the initial setup process, using our IP Grandstream phones system, which gave us access to advanced features that a call center would need.
When customers call in, they are prompted to push a button for which office they want and if they are new or existing patients. This will show up on our screen before we answer the call.
We created a strong team of patient service representatives who were heavily trained in our scheduling systems and created an excellent patient experience. The first impression of our company starts with that initial phone call. This first conversation is the foundation of a strong relationship with our patients.
Here are the nine things we implemented to ensure the best possible experience for our patients:
- Standard Scheduling System
- Scripting and the importance of verbiage
- Help patients get pre-approved for Carecredit and other financial options before they even walk in the door.
- Created a live Excel share sheet with a tab for each of our 5 locations with details about that office, the provider, insurance network status, and scheduling specifics so our team can refer to them when scheduling patients
- Communication is made possible by using Gmail chat messaging and creating group chats by location. For example, if we have a patient on the line, we can send a chat to get an instant answer without transferring the call.
- Our patient service reps do insurance verification and provide access to all our insurance sites to get immediate breakdowns.
- New patient paperwork is sent electronically from the call center ahead of time, ensuring the patient that if they fill out the paperwork ahead of time, the in-office wait time will be reduced.
- As appointments are canceled or rescheduled, our rep actively works to fill those spots immediately.
- The call center helps audit the scheduled days in advance and supports every team member in the office.
This has been a fantastic win-win experience for our company and patients. We are creating a better patient experience and seeing less stress on our admin team, which has ensured a smoother, more profitable schedule.
Our team now spends more time with the patients before them and is not bogged down with phone calls. Our patients calling in get the attention they deserve. Having a patient service center has been a fantastic change for our company.
About the Author
Jami Stockard, MAADOM
Jami Stockard is director of operations with Access Dental Services, LP in Missouri, a growing company with five current locations. She has worked in dentistry for over 19 years, starting as a chairside dental assistant and years in a practice manager role.
She received her FAADOM in 2023 and MAADOM in 2024.