Voice Solutions at the Heart of Telemedicine and Patient Contact Centre Services

Summary: Contact centres have a special role in the services offered by the healthcare industry. The number of patients who prefer contacting medical professionals remotely has increased since the outbreak of coronavirus. People also expect hospitals and pharmacies to be more prompt at informing them on the availability of products and services that they buy, seek or need for health concerns. This is where hosted solutions by Tata Tele Business Services help.

In the post-COVID world, many hospitals, individual practitioners, online pharmacies and government healthcare centres have adopted telemedicine to let patients consult them remotely. Some corporate organisations too are using the practice for their employee wellness programs.

To offer efficient remote consultation services, the healthcare & medical industry needs enterprise-grade voice solutions that are easy to deploy, user-friendly, feature-rich, ready for scaling and cost-effective.

While these organisations have had their basic telephone connections for years, the need for telecommunication has spiked in the wake of restricted movement and physical distancing norms brought about by the corona pandemic.

Hospitals cannot afford to keep other callers waiting merely because one of their phone lines is already busy. They must also ensure that patients’ and caregivers’ queries are routed to the exact departments they need. Another requirement is a customised outbound calling system to update patients on various aspects of the services they have availed of at the centre or may want to use in future.

The tailored voice solutions offered by Tata Tele Business Services are helping businesses of all sizes in enhancing their inbound and outbound phone calls without substantial investments or changes in infrastructure. The systems that we recommend for the healthcare industry include:

SIP with Hosted PBX

Session Initiation Protocol (SIP) trunks help to move the existing PBX phone systems to the cloud. They enable smooth calls using PSTN resources over the Internet Protocol (IP) with modern call management features such as auto-attendants, call forwarding, and voicemail. By opting for the TTBS Smart Hosted PBX, a healthcare company gets all the benefits of SIP calls without any new infrastructure or installation costs. With its hardware-free nature, the Hosted PBX allows doctors and other workers to connect with patients from any location. They simply have to log in to the call patch application of this service. Once they are connected to the central dashboard and dialler, the browser-based click-to-call option enables them to make calls from any desktop or mobile device.

It is easy for quality supervisors to analyse the performance of callers, thanks to the call-recording and dashboard-based reporting features of Smart PBX.

A critical aspect of this hosted PBX service is that it enables healthcare contact-centre workers to mark the missed incoming calls to the organisation and reinstate conversations that could not be completed due to technical/network issues on the customer’s line. Smart PBX comes with a seamless callback function that allows an agent to reconnect with patients who could not complete their discussion. The patients can then get the information that was missed due to a call drop.

As a zero-CapEx, scalable and maintenance-free solution, the Smart PBX is a future-ready voice solution that the healthcare industry can leverage to streamline its calling operations cost-effectively.

Toll-Free Number

Patients who need help from a medical organisation must have a dedicated number to reach without getting a busy tone. Ideally, on calling a business, they should also get the service free-of-charge. That’s where a toll-free service helps.

The TTBS toll-free numbers begin with an 1800 prefix and carry flexible subscription plans from a post-paid wired or wireless service provided by any vendor across India. They are also backed by an industry-first comprehensive SLA that clearly defines the critical aspects of the service in terms of availability, quality and TTBS’ responsibilities.

By using these easy-to-remember numbers for their contact centre, healthcare organisations and online pharmacies can define and modify their call routing preferences easily with a web interface. They can also record calls and collate call log data to analyse and improve their telephonic patient services.

A company can accept phone calls round-the-clock via its toll-free number. It is also easy to incorporate more channels on the line if there is a rise in the call volumes or in the number of departments that must attend these calls.

Hosted IVR

The Interactive Voice Response (IVR) is a productivity-enhancing system that a healthcare company can use along with a toll-free number. When patients call such a number, an IVR greets them and enables them to select a particular option from a menu of prompts. Upon receiving their response, it directs them to the most suitable resource for their query’s resolution – this could be general inquiries, a particular speciality department, the pathology lab, the pharmacy, the billing services, or any other segment of the hospital.

The TTBS Hosted IVR has a ready-to-use infrastructure that saves the business from investing in additional hardware while deploying this service on their contact number. Being rooted in the cloud, the IVR is also easy to scale.

It comes with upto four levels and 10 options for precise distribution of calls and allows for call transfer to a group of numbers. Senior management can monitor calls in real-time to evaluate the abilities of the patient-care staff. Additionally, the software offers voice-recording service and call history reports for a more in-depth analysis of telecommunication with the organisation.

The utility of Hosted IVR for hospitals has only increased in the post-COVID phase as it helps to direct patients using telemedicine services to suitable resources within seconds.

Hosted OBD

Multispeciality hospitals often need to call their clients to inform them on specific test results, dates for routine checkups, pending payments and new services that might be useful for them. The TTBS Hosted Outbound Dialler (OBD) has been devised for such tasks.

The Hosted OBD automates the dialling of pre-listed calls for the team of agents handling the campaign. As a cloud solution, it requires neither the deployment of physical circuits at the contact centre nor any manual intervention by agents.

Its call pacing options enable dialer managers to set an optimal speed of outbound call flow as per the load of contacts – this leads to better resource utilisation and agent efficiency. Customised campaign management tools to start, stop and modify also make the calling process streamlined.

Like other cloud-hosted tools by TTBS, the Hosted OBD has web interfaces for dashboard, reports and log management to keep analytics simple.

Companies that routinely call their patients and general prospects for information on new facilities and ongoing health camps in their premises can build more targeted marketing campaigns with Hosted OBD. It comes with unique features to support the delivery of suitable services and value proposition.

Its simple configuration, maintenance-free infrastructure, easy-to-use GUI portal for building campaigns, access to auto-updates and the end-to-end support offered by TTBS make Hosted OBD a valuable voice solution for healthcare enterprises.

Summing up

In a world where remote client services have become significant, efficient telecommunication structure is an essential need for healthcare companies. Even after we sail through the impacts of this pandemic, the value of hosted voice solutions will stay put. They save time for both patients and doctors by reducing unnecessary visits to hospitals. Such telephonic services also boost the brand image of healthcare companies and show their agility in responding to their clients.

To know more about the TTBS voice portfolio, contact us on 1800-266-1515.