Expert Tips for Stellar Phone Skills That Retain Patients

Due to social distancing under COVID-19, your staff and patients are communicating via phone now more than ever. Accordingly, the importance of winning phone skills has skyrocketed. Leaving your front desk phone etiquette skills to chance is a nightmare waiting to happen that can cost your physician practice big time.

Losing just 3% of your patient volume can conservatively equate to over $150,000 a year in lost revenue. Patients are less expensive to keep than to get. You’ll get higher satisfaction ratings by mastering the following customer service expert recommended tactics.

Employ these tips to encourage your practice staff to put their best voice forward so patients keep coming back.

Convey a Smile Over the Phone

Customer service experts advise that one of the best ways to relay a friendly tone is to encourage your staff to use a “phone voice.” This is an extra-friendly, cheerful version of themselves.

Another tip that will boost customer excellence is to answer the phone with a smile. If you’re having a bad day, fake it. Patients don’t want to feel like they’re bothering you.

What You Say Matters Too

To help staff master greetings, write a greeting script and have ever person on the phone use the same greeting. An excellent greeting should include:

1. the greeting (such as good morning)
2. your name (this is so-and-so)
3. the full name of the practice (with Dr. Smith’s office)
4. and how you can be of service (how may I help you?).

Provide Critical Information

Your front desk staff should be able to answer the most frequently asked questions about your practice. For example, what services you offer, your physicians’ credentials, etc. Try creating quick, short cheat sheets to keep at the front desk to help them have the information they need at their fingertips.

At the end of the call, if the patient has made an appointment, repeat all the information back to him: the physician’s name, appointment time, appointment purpose and location. Use the patient’s name as you do so. Then finally, ask if there is anything else the patient needs assistance with, and thank him for calling.

You probably have lots of other questions on the etiquette tips for the body of the call such as how do you maintain your best impression even when you have to put a patient on hold, should you use the patient’s name or could that cause a HIPAA violation, how can you calm patients who are even more stressed during this tough time.

That’s where customer service expert and consultant, Tracy Bird, FACMPE, CPC, CPMA, CEMC, CPC-I, comes in. During her online training “Proven Phone Etiquette Tactics to Speed Up Your Practice Recovery,” Tracy will walk you through how to effectively identify where your front desk phone etiquette is falling short and exactly how to correct it. You’ll receive proven training tools that will help ensure your staff are effectively trained.