The language and tone you use when answering patient phone calls greatly impact patient experience and satisfaction. First impressions count, and phone calls are often the first point of contact patients have with your practice. Positive phone experiences help build trust and increase the likelihood of a patient booking an appointment.
By using clear communication and a friendly, professional tone, you can create a positive experience that turns first-time callers into long-term patients. Learn best practices for answering patient phone calls efficiently and effectively.
Leveraging advanced tools like TrueLark can help streamline your phone calls and patient communications.
Create a Professional and Welcoming Greeting
Your team should use a consistent, standard greeting when answering patient phone calls. This greeting sets the tone for the interaction and establishes a professional image of your healthcare practice.
Your standard greeting should be easy to memorize so that all team members can remember it quickly when answering the phone. For example, it may sound something like this:
“Thank you for calling [Practice], this is [Name]. How can I help you?”
While including the right language in your greeting is important, your tone of voice may be even more so. Use a friendly tone and speak clearly to avoid miscommunication issues. Here are a few tips to ensure that your staff sounds welcoming from the first interaction with prospective patients:
- Smile while speaking; this helps convey warmth and makes patients and their family members feel welcomed, even when they cannot see who they are speaking with.
- Talk slowly and enunciate words. This fosters a professional image and prevents misunderstandings.
- Use polite phrases, such as “Please” and “Thank you,” to show respect.
Showcase Active Listening and Empathy
Active listening is a communication technique that involves focusing your attention solely on the speaker and making an effort to understand them rather than just passively hearing their words. Using this technique when answering patient phone calls can help you make a stronger connection and improve their experience with you. You can showcase active listening by:
- Letting the patient finish speaking before responding to them
- Restating what the patient said to ensure that you understand them
- Taking notes during longer conversations to remember key details
Meanwhile, showing empathy involves acknowledging the caller’s concerns and showing them that you understand how they are feeling. You can do this through phrases such as:
- “I understand that _______ must be frustrating.”
- “I can imagine how painful this has been for you.”
Validate the patient’s feelings and the need to schedule an appointment through language like “It’s completely understandable that you’d want to want to get in right away.” This phrasing helps convey that you are taking their concerns seriously and are doing everything in your power to address them.
Prioritize Efficient Call Management
Part of creating a professional and understanding patient experience is managing calls efficiently. This allows you to respond to missed calls promptly and handle a greater volume of inbound calls.
Efficient call management includes collecting key information about the patient up front, including their:
- Name
- Date of birth
- Reason for the call
This allows you to pull up their file and connect any information they share with past conversations or other relevant details.
For first-time callers, begin the call by collecting relevant information to help prepare for their appointment. Meanwhile, for emergency calls, it may be best to ask about the nature of the issue first rather than taking the time to write down contact information.
Some callers may provide unnecessary information during the call or prefer a more casual conversation. While you should respond to these efforts appropriately and help callers feel heard, you should also keep the call flowing smoothly to avoid unnecessary wait times for other callers.
If you need to research information or ask a doctor a question, ask the caller if you can place them on a brief hold before doing so. This enables you to respond to other callers while awaiting a response. You might also offer to call the patient back if their hold time exceeds a few minutes.
Handle Emergencies With Care
As a healthcare practice, you can assume that patients will occasionally call you with emergencies. They may not realize their symptoms require an emergency response until they speak with you. Creating a protocol to handle urgent calls with care can improve their outcomes.
- Identify emergency calls early on by asking questions like: “Is this an emergency or urgent concern?” This can also help you triage incoming calls during busier times in your practice.
- Use your knowledge of your practice’s capabilities to assess whether you can provide immediate assistance or whether you should refer the caller elsewhere.
- Give clear directions for next steps, such as calling 911 or coming to your practice for a same-day appointment.
- Maintain an empathetic tone and express genuine concern for the caller’s well-being.
When your medical practice has a targeted procedure for handling emergency calls, you will not be caught off guard by these concerns and can demonstrate competency to potential patients.
Turn Inquiries Into Appointments
Inbound calls offer a direct line of communication between your medical professionals or administrative staff and potential patients. Leveraging these inquiries as marketing opportunities can help you land more appointments and continue growing your healthcare organization.
Your answering staff should use techniques to encourage callers to schedule appointments while on the phone. This may involve:
- Suggesting available appointment times early in the call to make scheduling easier for the caller
- Creating a sense of urgency with your language: “We have an opening for tomorrow, but our schedule tends to fill up quickly on Wednesdays. Would you like me to go ahead and book it for you?”
- Offer flexibility as needed if your available times do not work for the caller.
While you are on the phone with a prospective patient, you can share information about relevant services they might be interested in. Explain that getting in sooner will help them address the issue before it worsens.
When you answer calls from individuals who are not currently patients, view them as opportunities to make a conversion without appearing overly pushy or sales-oriented. Once you get off the phone with the caller, that sense of urgency may disappear, and it might become significantly more challenging to convince them to schedule appointments.
Leverage Technology To Optimize Calls
Answering patient phone calls takes up a significant portion of your administrative team’s day. With the right technology, you can optimize patient calls and avoid missing essential opportunities for patient interactions.
Healthcare providers often use call tracking and scheduling systems to track call volumes, appointment bookings, and patient follow-ups. These systems can automatically schedule appointments and send reminders to reduce no-shows, freeing up your phones for higher-level patient inquiries.
You can also use technology to streamline appointment bookings. Providing a self-service option for scheduling appointments online, or even redirecting calls to a medical answering service specifically for appointment scheduling, can save your staff a significant amount of time.
Tools like TrueLark’s AI-powered scheduling software can help automate appointment bookings, send reminders, and reduce no-show rates, optimizing the overall patient call experience.
Provide Continuous Training for Improved Performance
The way your team answers and responds to patient calls significantly impacts the patient experience. This first point of contact is crucial, and you should regularly optimize your answering process.
Provide continuous training on phone etiquette and best practices so that your team stays on the same page. This might include holding periodic workshops or training sessions, or even guiding team members through role-playing scenarios to help them practice challenging calls.
Your medical practice should also evaluate performance through call recordings and feedback. Assess the tone, professionalism, and overall effectiveness of random phone calls, then provide constructive feedback to those team members.
For staff members who are struggling with answering patient phone calls effectively, have them shadow higher-performing staff to learn best practices. Ultimately, if a staff member’s communication style or tone is lacking, you can assign them to other areas of your front office and allow more personable team members to handle calls.
Enhance Your Patient Phone Calls With TrueLark’s Automated Systems
Using effective communication in healthcare practices is important, whether you are answering patient phone calls, speaking with patients in person, or responding to emails or text messages. But phone calls are especially meaningful, as they are often the first opportunity you have to engage potential patients.
A well-handled phone call can make the difference between gaining a patient and losing one. The tone, empathy, and professionalism your staff displays during patient calls directly impact your brand reputation and the overall patient experience.
With these strategies, you can improve your medical practice’s operational efficiency and promote the long-term health of your practice. TrueLark can also help you elevate patient communication.
By incorporating technology like TrueLark’s automated systems, you can streamline the effectiveness of your patient phone calls, leading to higher patient satisfaction and better practice management. Book a demo today to learn more.
