5 Tactics every healthcare contact center leader needs to know in 2H 2024

The healthcare contact center landscape is in continuous change, driven by technological advancements, shifting patient expectations, and emerging healthcare trends. Using communications automation and Generative AI (GenAI) healthcare contact centers are dramatically streamlining the patient journey, improving patient satisfaction, enhancing patient engagement, and personalizing care.

But how are they finding success using communications automation and GenAI? Many healthcare contact centers are using the following five tactics to stay competitive and find success.

1. Focusing on the “boom” of patient centricity

In 2024, healthcare contact centers are upping their game when it comes to offering patients a personalized journey from pre-admission through aftercare. This includes empathetic and attentive patient interactions across all channels, providing personalized assistance, and ensuring timely responses throughout the patient healthcare journey. By using communications automation with GenAI, healthcare contact centers are delivering empathetic interactions by responding to patient sentiment while offering prompt information and consistent outreach.

2. Prioritizing quality

More than ever, the quality of the patient interactions with your healthcare contact center determines whether patients will continue to use your services. Low First Call Resolution (FCR), Higher Abandonment Rate, and longer Average Handle Times (AHT) will have a higher impact on your patient service efforts; shifting your focus to quality interactions is critical –especially when 65%¹ of patients expect higher customer service from their healthcare organizations than they did the previous year. Accelerating your healthcare contact center using communications automation with GenAI allows you to solve patient queries faster and more effectively, increasing patient satisfaction and the quality of overall service.

3. Embracing the rise of AI

In 2024 GenAI is everywhere. Implementing GenAI takes patient experience to the next level- the technology enhances patient satisfaction by delivering personalized interactions bolstered by sentiment analysis. When paired with communications automation, the technology streamlines processes and facilitates better interactions between humans and machines. Using communications automation with GenAI you’ll be able to expand your self-service and automation functionalities, swiftly resolving straightforward issues while efficiently handling more intricate interactions that require staff intervention.

4. Treating omnichannel as necessary

Patients are desperately looking for precise and consistent communication across several channels. In 2024, patients prefer specific communications channels while remaining flexible and switching between channels at any time for convenience. This trend is driving healthcare contact centers to roll out multichannel communication strategies to enhance accessibility, improve responsiveness, optimize communications, and ultimately, offer the best patient experience. By using communications automation with GenAI, contact centers are unlocking the benefits of an orchestrated experience across channels such as voice, chat, messaging, social, IVRs, and AI agents.

5. Accepting and leveraging change

Communications automation with GenAI is deeply transforming how healthcare organizations fulfill patients’ needs. As a healthcare contact center leader, you must stay attuned to the latest developments in automated technology, how they are reshaping patients’ preferences and habits, and how they are transforming the patient journey. Communications automation with GenAI allows you to stay at the forefront and successfully usher in a new era of patient care.

1. The State of Healthcare Call Center Customer Service in 2024 ↩︎