Answering Service Provider Centralization

Multiple Locations, One Answering Service

Many health care organizations such as Hospitalists, Home Health Care Providers, and Medical Group Practices have multiple locations throughout a region, a state or throughout the United States. Multi-branched organizations can realize benefits by consolidating call center services with a single provider.

Consider the following five advantages of using one contact center as opposed to multiple call centers:

1. Centralized training of the staff achieves consistency and helps control cost.
2. Quality control is more easily monitored with a single point of contact.
3. Your branding is consistent with a well-written unified message.
4. Enterprise analytics from one source can provide data necessary to forecast company trends and measure performance by area.
5. HIPAA compliance is easier to achieve and verify with a single vendor.

While I never recommend choosing your service provider solely on the basis of price, a cost analysis is relatively easy, albeit time consuming.  Costs can be based on number of calls, minutes of talk time, number of messages, and other factors that vary by vendor.  Less easy to measure but critical to the success of your business is the warmth and professionalism felt by your callers.  Consistency in these areas is often easier to achive with a single provider.

Consolidation can help achieve cost savings due to economy of scale.  A client who generates a large call volume is often able to obtain more favorable pricing.

Can consolidating your call center services help your organization?  Post your comments or ideas below!