Outsourcing Healthcare Customer Service: Are You Asking the Right Questions?

Healthcare technology organizations should be hyperfocused on providing excellent customer experience (CX). Unfortunately for most, the reality is the opposite. Can outsourcing CX help provide the service your customers and patients expect from your brand?

It could be argued that customer experience (CX) is the most important line item on a balance sheet. With good CX comes improved customer satisfaction, retention, and churn reduction. Without it, it’s hard to call an organization truly successful. After all, isn’t the point of creating a business to offer services to better a customer’s journey?

Especially important in industries like healthcare, customer experience is becoming a major point of emphasis. People are especially sensitive to data privacy regarding their healthcare; others simply want to speak with a real person about their doctor visits.

If you don’t breathe life into your CX offerings with the same vigor as you did when conducting a branding/identity workshop, it’s hard for those qualities to shine through to the customer in a meaningful way. But the same struggle remains: can great customer experience be in sync with the harsh realities of the bottom line?

The answer is a complex one, and unique to the qualities of your organization itself. If you’re considering outsourcing CX to an outside firm, here’s what you need to take into consideration:

1. Do your CX and support channels match the quality of your product?

More than 80% of customers expect a CX response within the first day of contact, and the credibility of your brand (and a customer’s loyalty to it) depends on your ability to reply quickly. 

Even if you have a dedicated, around-the-clock team, that doesn’t mean they’re adequately serving your customers to meet their expectations and needs. If you’re struggling to address customer tickets, fill requests, and reach acceptable customer satisfaction standards, outsourcing your healthcare technology CX may be the right move.

2. Does your organization have the bandwidth to improve CX on its own?

Your own employees may be capable of addressing patient requests, but that doesn’t mean that utilizes their time and energy to the fullest potential. More than half of today’s employees suffer from burnout, and more qualified, higher-end employees don’t have time to spare addressing customer feedback and questions. 

Having a high volume of customer service requests takes precious time away from other critical business functions. Outsourcing your CX relieves this pressure and resource commitment from your employees, allowing them to serve your organization better and with a reduced risk of burnout and churn. 

3. Does your support department have a high churn rate?

Hiring — and retaining — good customer support agents is a rarity in any economic market outlook, and it’s certainly not an easy feat here in 2022. Even if you have the capacity to service your customer’s needs, sudden turnover or a revolving door on your customer support team will only make matters worse as time goes on. Outsourcing CX mitigates that risk, allowing you to worry about your product and not whether you have enough agents to address customer and patient concerns. 

4. Does in-house CX align with your bottom line?

Outsourcing non-critical patient interactions to a qualified customer support team give your organization a chance to reset and breathe. But that doesn’t mean your job is done. While it’s true that outsourcing customer and patient support systems can preserve resources, it’s also an investment. It’s up to you to determine whether the rate of return on the investment will offset the cost of an outsourced provider. Research shows that 86% of customers will spend more if it means they’ll have a better experience with the brand. Healthcare technology is no different. 

5. Does your in-house support adequately serve your customers?

Nearly 2/3rds of customers expect their customer support representatives to interact with them in their native language, which is a challenge for regional and global organizations alike. With a dedicated multilingual customer support team, the right CX provider can ensure your patients and customers get the information and outcomes they need without struggling with a language barrier.

Quality patient experiences are key to success in healthcare technology

The idea that outsourcing customer support will save money but result in a worse experience for your customers is misinformed. Providing great CX means committing resources to the right customer support provider, allowing companies to scale quickly, reduce overhead, and improve their customer experience journey from end to end.

Outsourcing CX is an investment that can pay dividends far into the future. At Epiphany, we become an extension of your team and provide an unparalleled level of service to your customers near and far. Leveraging detailed customer insights, highly trained agents, and decades’ worth of experience, we deliver the support your customers demand and build your brand’s reputation as a reliable business partner. Contact us today to learn more.