Why Are 60 Percent Of Your Patients Already Disappointed?

What would you do differently if you knew that 60 percent of the people who call your health system were already disappointed?

Would everyone have better experience if the health system closed its call center? Quite possibly. Why run the risk of disappointing the other 40 percent of your callers for the first time, and disappointing the other 60 percent for the second time?

And how could we have already disappointed 60 percent of the callers if this is the first time they are calling us?

A fair question. An important question; one with an answer steeped in fact.

National call center data shows that 60 percent of an institution’s customers will go to the institution’s website to solve their problem before giving in and calling the institution. That same data shows people do not want to call a company because their expectation is that the experience will be poor.

So, for those call center managers who are using willow-witching techniques report how high their first call resolution is, whatever numbers you are reporting are way too high.

First call resolution has already come and gone. Sixty percent of your callers have already had at least one failed attempt to access your health system. They went to your website and could not find what they needed to find.

So, what do we know?

• We know people expect a bad experience if they call so they go to the website
• People get a bad experience on the website — a bad experience is defined as wanting to accomplish something and being unable to do so
• Because they could not get their needs met online they call the contact center
• They will not return to the website the next time they need something because they know their needs will not be met
• Many of their expectations of having a bad experience when they call are met
• This makes it even less likely that they will call the next time they need something

Poor access online. Poor access on the phone.

Many, if not most health systems provide a user access experience that is less satisfying that the experience patients get when they call their payer to file a dispute.

User experience equals access experience. User experience equals patient experience. How good is your health system’s user experience?

See what you can accomplish online. See how easy it is to accomplish anything on the phone. Unless you come away saying, “Wow, that was easy,” your health system has a lot of work to do.

[This piece was originally published on Paul Roemer’s blog, Disrupting Patient Access & Experience. To follow him on Twitter, click here.]