Patients calling the Avenues Internal Medicine clinic are important, and the clinic’s patient service representatives are proud of their quick answering times and low percentage of abandoned calls. To them great phone metrics mean being available as a team to help patients with clarity, compassion, and few—if any—delays.
Seth Jones, Macy Babcock, Eriko Weston, and Michelle Goldstein work at the front desk in the clinic, covering incoming patient calls while also checking in arriving patients and helping departing ones.
The four patient service representatives had 1,957 calls in June. Only 2.3% of those were abandoned calls from patients who hung up before an answer. Their average answering time for the month was 29 seconds.
“If you’re doing really good and making your goal, the abandonment rate should be less than 5%, and we’re at 2.3 %,” says Mike Mieure, practice manager. “We’re not losing a lot of patients that are hanging up before we get to them. It’s just them working together as a team.”
“As far as what we look at when we see those numbers, they show the quality of service we’re giving or the attention we’re giving to the patient as quickly as possible,” Seth says. “We get to see how many patients are asking for help or reaching out for us to help, and then we see how many people we’re actually currently helping, which gives us more of an idea of where we need to step up.”
To help them step up together as a team, Mike emails their statistics to them as a group weekly, allowing everyone to see each other’s statistics to know how he or she is doing compared to everyone else. The positive competition pulls them together.
“We all work together great as a team,” Eriko says. “We’re all aware of each other and the phone calls and patients who are also walking up. We all handle it together. If we didn't work well together, and in unison, it may be harder because it might be a little more chaotic.”
They’ve also extended that teamwork between the front and back offices.
“If it’s something where the patient has a question that needs a clinical perspective, then we have a light we hit that lights up for the medical assistants, and we’ll transfer the call to them,” Mike says.
Like most offices, vacations and illness can reduce the number of team members. But each patient service representative keeps specific goals in mind, like answering the phone within 30 seconds or having fewer than 5% abandoned calls—whether they have four people at the front desk or one.
“There have been times when we had one of the four who was on vacation,” Mike says. “We were down to three, and then the other two got sick. One day, I was down to one (PSR) for half the day, and we had one person checking everybody in and answering the phones. We still ended that day with zero abandoned calls, and she took almost 100 calls by herself.”
Macy managed that half day by herself. She says, “I just took it one call at a time. I’m really good at multitasking so I was able to just manage each call that came in really well. It’s about not letting it overwhelm you. Stop, take a deep breath, and prioritize.”
Each patient service representative sees the patient on the phone or in front of him or her as the priority in that moment and strives to give each personal attention and empathetic help.
“They’re just really invested in patient care,” Mike says.
“I want to make sure that our patients are always at ease and know that they can trust us to get a resolution and get a quick one at that,” Michelle says. “Whether they’re venting or upset or frustrated or even happy, just listen to what they need. Make sure you gather all the information. Make sure everything is clarified and everything is correct. But more importantly, make sure they know you’re there for them and you’ll continue to take care of the issue.”