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Over one-quarter of phone calls to businesses don’t get answered, according to Invoca customer platform data. No matter what business you’re in, missing customer calls has a big impact on the bottom line. In healthcare, missing calls from patients may have the greatest repercussions.
Whether the call is to book an appointment or ask a question, not connecting with the provider can impact the quality of care the patient receives. The result of unanswered calls extends beyond the patient, too. In healthcare, about 80% of appointments are booked on the phone. If calls aren’t getting answered, the provider is missing out on appointments being booked and the patient gets a sub-par experience.
This is why many healthcare organizations are now using conversation intelligence solutions like Invoca to gain a competitive advantage and provide better patient experiences. The AI-powered technology can route calls based on intent to reduce hold times and transfers, as well as enable digital media optimization based on caller data.
A great example of this in action is University Hospitals use of Invoca’s trackable numbers and call routing to direct patients to the correct facility and department. The result: they increased appointments scheduled by 580% and dramatically improved the customer experience.
What’s more, by understanding patient conversations in every call, conversation intelligence uncovers what is driving phone calls and phone call conversions so that providers can significantly reduce wasted marketing spend and demonstrate tangible results. Capturing calls, call drivers and call outcomes is the key to happier patients and more profitable providers.
But what happens to calls that don’t get answered? Even the most successful healthcare organizations miss calls, whether it’s because they occur after hours or get sent to voicemail due to an overburdened call center or various other factors. In fact, the average for unanswered calls in the healthcare industry is about 29%, according to Invoca customer data.
Want to see what missed patient calls are costing you? Try out our two-minute missed call calculator.
While not every call is from a patient trying to book an appointment, a large percentage of them are, and that has big implications for the patients seeking care as well as the provider who relies on those appointments for their success. Compounding the issue, providers often have more than one facility or office, which complicates things for both the patient and the provider.
For the patient, it may mean the dreaded stream of transfers and long hold times and a frustrating experience. For the provider, it can be challenging to track how many calls are being answered in each office or location, capture the data they need to re-engage those patients, and ultimately get them what they need. To create better experiences, the provider needs to troubleshoot the issues that are leading to missed patient calls, understand why some offices are performing well and others are not, and correct the issues causing missed calls so more patients are reached across the board.
While this may seem daunting, with the right technology and data, it’s easier than you think to start reversing the tide of unanswered calls.
The solution is Invoca Lost Sales Recovery. It enables healthcare organizations to see exactly how many calls go unanswered and provides tools to easily follow up on missed sales opportunities from missed calls. Here’s how it works:
By using heuristic voice energy detections, Invoca introduced a new Signal type that can identify whether or not calls were answered by a live person, if the call was sent to voicemail, or if a voicemail was left. It can detect these events with over 90% accuracy right out of the gate.
Because it uses voice energy to detect call outcomes, there’s no need for call recordings or transcription to enable this feature to work. (Of course, having recording and transcription enabled can provide additional insights.)
As a healthcare provider, we rely on phone calls to drive appointments and deliver a personalized experience for our patients. Invoca’s Lost Sales Recovery allows us to see exactly where our unanswered calls are happening and re-engage those callers so that we can immediately provide the support our patients deserve and recapture the appointments that are vital to our business’s success.
- Noah Brooks, Manager of Digital Engagement and Analytics, University Hospitals.
Not all missed calls are created equal, and not every call should be treated equally. For example, having an inbox full of generic “missed appointment call” alerts isn’t particularly helpful. This is how Invoca differentiates itself with its healthcare solution: we give you the transparency you need to prioritize your unanswered calls so that you can respond intelligently, appropriately and at scale.
You can isolate the unanswered calls that were most likely asking to book urgent appointments, for example, by defining a “Schedule Appointment,” choice with criteria like IVR keypresses (e.g., caller pressed 1 to schedule) or filter missed calls by hundreds of marketing criteria, such as if they called from a webpage or clicked an ad that shows specific intent. This ability to automatically identify and prioritize what calls you need to follow up and when on is the key to responding to patients.
Having visibility into unanswered calls makes it possible to troubleshoot and fix issues. Invoca’s reporting suite includes “Calls by Hour” and “Calls by Day of Week” reports that can be filtered by the new “Calls Not Answered by Agent” voice detection Signal.
This could uncover a staffing issue during business hours, an IVR that’s connecting calls during off hours, or a phone system that’s dropping calls. Once you know this, you can work to address the issue and reduce the volume of unanswered calls.
As we discussed, providers with more than one location or office get transparency into exactly how many calls are being answered by each location, department, etc. This metric can be used to understand high-performing locations, or to make the case for staffing up or training at lower-performing locations.
Acadia is a behavioral healthcare provider with over 225 locations in 40 states and phone calls drive nearly half of our patient appointments. Invoca’s Lost Sales Recovery gives us visibility into when calls are not being answered at each location and allows us to optimize campaigns and processes in order to maintain our high standards of patient care, support, and compassion.
- Amanda Sloan, Director of Marketing, Acadia Healthcare.
For providers that run marketing campaigns to target patients during open enrollment or at year end to spend their FSA dollars for example, conversation intelligence can help significantly increase the success of those campaigns. It’s an invaluable tool for healthcare marketers to see how many quality appointment calls their campaigns are driving and how increased answer rates and appointment set rates can translate into better marketing performance. Marketers can even retarget missed callers seamlessly and simply through integrations that automate digital retargeting.
The cost of patient calls that go unanswered is measured not just by poor patient experience but also by lost booked appointments. The latter translates into wasted marketing spend and lost revenue. The first step for any healthcare provider is to understand their own call answer rate and the associated marketing and revenue costs. To make this easy, we’ve created this two-minute calculator that will uncover how things look.
Of course, we’re not just here to show you the numbers, we’re here to help you answer more calls and reach more patients. To get started, we’ll do all the legwork and create a customized demo (no strings attached!) that’ll walk you through how Invoca can help you deeply understand the patient caller experience and then use those insights to drive better outcomes for them and for your business.
