Online healthcare customer service is different from service in other industries. People increasingly go online to handle healthcare tasks like enrolling in plans, accessing benefits, and paying bills.
In fact, according to recent research by Google:
- 77% of patients use search
- 83% use online hospital sites
- 54% use online health insurance company sites
Yet healthcare customers are also patients and/or patient family members. Treating patients well also means treating customers right.
In today’s online, option-rich, patient-centric landscape, happy customers stick around, while those who are unhappy with their experience for any reason easily move on. That’s why leading healthcare companies have made it a high priority to provide customer service for online visitors that is respectful of, and responsive to, individual patient preferences, needs, and values.
Providers are responding with a new level of personal visual engagement—securely sharing a collaborative browser view alongside integrated live, one-way agent video. The benefits of making online healthcare easier are impossible to deny. Here are five important ways that advanced visual engagement technology transforms the relationship between an online healthcare organization and its valued customer base.
1. Expedite healthcare enrollment
Enrolling in a healthcare plan can trigger “option overload,” leading to trepidation, uncertainty, and confusion. Customers can take many paths to identify the right coverages, benefits, and specifics for themselves. Yet how do they choose the options that will best suit their needs?
When working with online healthcare organizations, applicants do dramatically better if they can interact with a knowledgeable agent who is using visual engagement solutions. The Affordable Care Act Tracking Survey shows that adults who received personal assistance were nearly 20% more likely to enroll in an insurance plan online (compared to those who didn’t receive personal assistance). With visual engagement solutions, agents can walk customers through processes and literally show them onscreen how to fill out relevant forms.
Read: Why is Cobrowse a High Priority for the Best Healthcare Organizations?
Customers feel more relaxed and agents have the opportunity to show customers options that they might not have been aware of.
2. Improve online self-service
That leads us to how visual engagement dovetails perfectly with healthcare consumers’ heightened expectation of more personal control over their activities. Here the service rep acts as teacher, walking the online user through a process or interface once in order to become self-sufficient.
Once customers know how to perform processes such as paying bills or making changes to their healthcare plans, they can do it themselves. The reduction in callbacks is a win for both the healthcare organization and their customers.
3. Ease online payment
Online money transactions can create a troubling level of uncertainty. Making premium payments to healthcare organizations is no exception.
Customers embrace online systems faster when they have instant access to agents who can show them the answers to their questions in real-time and guide the cursor onscreen. Live guidance enables customers to develop a rock-solid confidence that they can succeed.
Read: Why Invest in Improving Customer Experience?
4. Insure privacy and security
Healthcare customer relationships are all about maintaining an unwavering commitment to respectful information privacy. When customers need help online, agents should only see only the single browser window involved in the help request – nothing further. Moreover, all private information in the window should be hidden from the agents’ view.
The connection between customers and healthcare agents should be built on encrypted local session services and require no application downloads or Java code at the customer device. And without a doubt, HIPAA compliance for transmitted data is a prerequisite for providing the level of trust and privacy that must be incorporated into every customer service interaction.
5. Clarify healthcare statements
For online healthcare companies, explaining statements and helping customers understand various aspects of their accounts lies at the heart of creating successful and satisfied customers. Visual engagement software helps agents explain processes more effectively with less effort.
Read: Top Three 2017 Customer Experience Trends You Need to Know
Service reps using visual engagement solutions also have an easier time developing customers’ trust and goodwill. Having a “real person” walk customers through the ins and outs of their healthcare situation helps de-escalate an otherwise emotional or stressful situation. Moreover, when customers gain clarity into the otherwise complex ins and outs of their healthcare situation, they will stay longer with a healthcare organization and also be more likely to recommend it to their peers.
Humanizing online healthcare is good for everyone’s health
There are, of course, some ways that healthcare customer service is like other industries. Personalized engagements produce outstanding user experiences, which in turn create competitive differentiation, customer satisfaction, and long-term loyalty.
With the right visual engagement technology, healthcare organizations can securely connect with patients, members, partners, and caregivers through any device in a highly personal manner. The trust, ease, and rapport your organization builds will result in life-long happy customers.
About Glance Networks
Glance helps enterprise organizations create the ultimate customer experience with smart, omni-channel visual engagement solutions based around integrated cobrowse, screen share, and one-way agent video. We are one of the world’s simplest, most reliable and secure platforms that enable companies to see, show and share anything online, creating a frictionless path to great experiences in sales, support and customer service. The result is improved customer satisfaction and loyalty, increased revenue growth and operational savings. From financial services and healthcare to retail and travel and leisure, even the most advanced technology and SaaS organizations – we transform the customer experience for today’s business. Learn More »
