Hospital Call Center Software and Communications Technology

2016-10-04T23:00:00.003-05:00

Interoperability is a Natural Solution for Healthcare Call Centers.

The call center in a healthcare organization preforms a number of very important and very different functions. One of the most significant is serving as a virtual lobby, when processing internal and external calls. It may be the initial touchpoint a patient has with the organization, so the experience has to be positive. As the saying goes, “You only have one opportunity to make a positive first impression.” Also the call center serves as the nerve center for ongoing communications.

Modern healthcare call centers need to be able to handle all types of calls quickly and efficiently. To ensure the virtual lobby experience is positive, the call center operators need immediate access to accurate data using modern technology. To accomplish this, information systems need to be able to share, pass, and store usable data from system to system. Interoperability is a term used in healthcare to describe the idea of different technologies and systems communicating to share data.

To handle calls effectively and efficiently, the call center system needs to use data that may reside in external databases on other systems. As an example, if a caller wants to talk to an admitted patient, the operator needs to know which room to send the call to. Most patient admission, discharge, and transfer (ADT) information resides in a database that is external to the call center system.
Without interoperability, the operator would have to bring up a second screen to view the ADT information, go back to the call center system screen, manually enter the room extension, and transfer the call. With interoperability the call center system would automatically download the ADT information from the external database and present it to the operator on the call center screen, eliminating several steps and decreasing the chance of error. Interoperability works behind the scenes to automate data exchanges and sharing.

Making sure the hospital call center is interoperable with other systems is the safe way to make sure call center operators communicate with callers in a timely and effective manner. A few of the important IT systems and technologies that should be interoperable with the healthcare call center system include:

Electronic health records (EHR)
Messaging applications (paging and secure messaging apps)
Alarms and monitoring systems
Nurse call systems
Scheduling systems

Many healthcare call centers routinely use outdated technology. Binders with paper call schedules, non PC-based PBX consoles, fax machines, data access terminals, and sticky notes are used by operators to access the information they need to handle calls. These makeshift solutions lead to inefficiency and mistakes.

Interoperability is a Two-Way Street: Hospital call center systems store information as administrators and operators input data or create schedules. This information may be valuable to other departments or used to augment an external document.
As an example, when an operator takes a message from a patient for a clinician, that message can be automatically sent to the EHR system and be posted to that patient’s individual electronic health record. By using interoperability, information from numerous databases can be combined in one area to form a master record for a particular patient.

Not All Systems are Created Equal: Legacy systems and technologies were not designed with data exchange in mind. There are several ways to connect IT systems to the healthcare organization’s larger digital ecosystem, but these can be costly and potentially unreliable.
Health Level Seven (HL7) is a set of standards used to transfer clinical and administrative data between software applications. Many present-day IT developers design products with HL7 in mind, helping organizations move toward interoperability throughout the enterprise. The healthcare call center can use HL7 to populate patient, clinician, and employee directories for operators. Also HL7 can be used as a way to post information from the call center system to a patient’s EHR.

Reducing Costs: Interoperability will make your call center operators more efficient, eliminate mistakes, and reduce costs by automating processes that are currently handled manually. As healthcare providers look to reduce expenses, interoperability in the call center is a natural solution.

Visit www.1call.com or send an email to info@1call.com to learn more.

Why Scripting for Managing Calls in a Healthcare Call Center?

2013-12-05T09:13:00.000-06:00

Scripting can be used to guide agents or switchboard operators through the flow of a patient customer conversation. A script enables the agent to drive the dialogue with the customer, and ensures that the agent is able to complete a customer interaction to the call center’s – and the customer’s – satisfaction. A script helps agents respond to a caller’s requirements, and prompts the agent to ask – and obtain answers to – additional questions that will enable a call center to deliver a higher level of customer satisfaction.

A robust scripting application provides the ability to access all customer information appropriate to the call – sometimes acquiring that data from multiple databases, including electronic medical record (EMR) databases – and display it in a format that is easy for the agent to understand. It also provides the ability to update customer information and to collect new data that can help the call center provide superlative customer service.

Scripting in a medical or hospital call center provides a number of benefits:

· Customer Relationship Management. Scripting helps maintain a consistent quality of customer interaction, each and every time a customer makes contact, regardless of which agent handles the call. Scripting also provides an easy and efficient way to collect additional customer information that not only helps ensure the customer’s satisfaction with that call, but also enables the agent to enhance the overall relationship with the customer.

· Increased Agent Productivity. Because all of the customer information that an agent needs is presented in a clear, concise format with no toggling through multiple data screens, agents can complete a customer transaction quickly. Scripting also provides talking points for agents, so they know what to say and when to say it.

· Reduced Agent Training Time. Many agents in a call center have multiple skill sets to handle different types of calls – appointments, calls for a doctor’s office, customer service, and so on. Each type of call typically needs to be handled slightly differently, so scripts should be customized for each doctor and call type, ensuring agents get the needed information on every call. The scripts then lead the agent through different types of caller transactions with minimal training, because the script provides the correct data to handle the call and helps the agent navigate through the call flow. And, because a script can provide instructional information on handling a call, scripting can enable a call center to overflow calls to less skilled back-up agent groups more effectively during periods of peak calling.

· Enhanced Agent Effectiveness. Customers want to have their needs met the first time they make contact – they don’t want to be told to call another number, or to be transferred to another department, or to wait for a callback. Because a script can bring together information from a number of different databases, agents are provided with all of the information they need, when they need it, to handle the customer contact immediately.

Healthcare organizations can use scripting to enhance each customer’s call experience. A variety of call types, including patient information, physician referral, physician answering service, and code calls, can all be handled more efficiently, resulting in a reduction of errors using scripting for enhanced call flow navigation.

Matt Everly is the marketing director for Amtelco’s 1Call healthcare division. Matt has worked at Amtelco for over 20 years and has held numerous positions, including Southeast regional salesmanager, executive suite market development, and marketing manager.

Selecting a Healthcare Call Center Platform for the Present…and the Future

2013-02-01T15:53:00.001-06:00

When selecting a call center platform for your healthcare organization, it is important to consider a number of factors, including:

· your current needs
· internal hospital systems that will need to interface with your call center
· future needs
· additional products or services from the prospective vendors

Following are some ideas to help you evaluate the various platforms.

What are your call center needs?

Many hospitals consider the switchboard a call center, while others have a separate call center and switchboard. Make sure the system you are evaluating can perform the necessary tasks. To efficiently handle calls, switchboard operators need to access information instantly, and transfer callers with few keystrokes. If your operators take appointments or perform physician referral requests, you may need a more robust call navigation system that streamlines the question and answer process between callers and operators, ensuring the correct result.

Interfacing to hospital systems

A call center system doesn’t exist as an island in your organization; there are several hospital systems it needs to “talk to.” Obviously, your PBX or VoIP switch is important to consider. Know how the system will interface to your switch, and if it will work with your current software version. As EMR systems become a more vital part of your organization’s workflow, operators need access to patient information and other data, so a Health Level Seven (HL7) interface is another must. Other integrations to consider include paging, alarms and additional communications devices.

What future call center needs could your organization have?

When evaluating call center products, it’s important to think of the big picture and consider a number of things. First, are there other departments within your organization that could benefit by having access to the call center system? Many organizations have “home grown” small call center systems scattered throughout a facility. The call center product should be flexible enough to accommodate your organization’s structure. Second, consider your company’s history, or the possibility of acquiring other healthcare organizations or facilities. The call center system should be flexible enough to work with various telephony and healthcare IT systems in a centralized or decentralized environment. Finally, are there planned projects that will need call center services? Examples of this include implementing a nurse triage or physician referral program. Consider the call center needs of these programs when evaluating systems.

What else does the call center vendor bring to the table?

Thinking long term is a good idea, so look at everything a vendor has to offer over and above your current needs. Add-on products and modules for a call center system are important in an ever-changing healthcare environment. The Joint Commission, HIPAA and HITECH are all important factors in the evaluation process. Common additions to call center systems include enterprise-wide web-based on-call, staff scheduling tools, secure communications, and call recording packages used to maintain historical accuracy and as a training tool. Also, some organizations are adopting a “work from home” operator workforce, so make sure your vendor has products and experience in remote operator environments.

As technology continues to evolve, we see the call center transforming into something used in different and unique places throughout a healthcare organization. Make sure your vendor has the call center platform you need now, and the ability to grow with you in the future.

Matt Everly is the Marketing Director for Amtelco’s 1Call Healthcare Division. Matt has worked at Amtelco for over 20 years and has held numerous positions including southeast regional sales manager, executive suite market development and marketing manager.

Technorati Tags: Hospital,Call center software,switchboard,communications

It’s a Wireless World

2012-04-04T09:52:00.001-05:00

Someday, in the not so distant future, school children will read about the history of telecommunications and computing. They will read about how homes once were connected to the phone company, the cable TV company, and even the power company, by separate dedicated wires. They will read about how our offices used to be connected to the corporate PBX and to the local area network by other sets of wires. They will read about how we had to plug in our laptops, tablets, and cell phones overnight to charge their batteries. They will be amazed at how we could function while being tied down like this.

The world of wires is rapidly disappearing. We are breaking free from the wire tethers that keep us in our offices and limit our productivity as we move throughout our days. We are using smartphones, laptops, and tablets to access our applications, e-mails, files and network resources no matter where we are. We can work from home while sitting in our most comfortable easy chairs. We can take notes in meetings without writing them on pads of paper and then typing them into our computers when we get back to our offices. Our stacks and file cabinets full of paper are disappearing.

With the advent of solutions such as AMTELCO's miSecureMessages interactive smartphone paging solution, we are accessing on-call schedules, updating our statuses, and sending and receiving pages on our smartphones and tablets. When we receive pages, we are able to reply to the person sending the page, letting them know if we are able to respond or if they need to find another resource. What a concept, responding to a page and letting the person know we have received it. No more sitting by a phone and waiting for a return call. Who would have thought it would someday be this easy.

The final step in breaking free from our wires will be the deployment of wireless power. Wireless charging pads already are available for many of our smartphones and tablets. Imagine walking into your office or a hotel room and setting your phone on a charging pad. No more carrying chargers with us and replacing them when they get lost or burn out from overuse. Someday we won't need to plug our computers, our lighting, and our appliances into wall outlets. Our AC power will be provided wirelessly, just as our voice and network communications are now.

We are in the midst of a major shift in how we live and work. We will have less stress and will be more productive. We will be more responsive and will provide better service to our customers. We just have to embrace the change, break free from all those wires, and enjoy the ride.

(Kevin Beale is director of software research and development for AMTELCO and 1Call)

Technorati Tags: Telephone Answering Service,TAS,NAEO,ATSI,Amtelco,1Call,smartphone,messaging,appointment reminders,communications,wireless

Call Center of the Future

2012-01-04T16:19:00.000-06:00

By Kevin Beale

I think it’s human nature to find things to keep ourselves busy. I certainly am no exception to that rule. I always have a million things I need to be doing for work or at home. One of the hardest things to do is to take a step back from our daily regimen to plan for the future.

Occasionally, looking into the future is a good exercise. So here goes.
Predicting the future of a business segment such as call centers is not magic, it is simply a process of paying attention to trends and making calculated guesses on how those trends will continue or change in the future.

One of the constants of our industry is change. We are constantly being pushed by clients to offer enhanced services to meet their unique business objectives. Clients don’t care about the technology utilized to run our call centers as long as they feel we’ll be there when they need us. They’re focused more on the services we provide for them. That’s where each call center has the opportunity to distinguish itself from the competition.

Call scripting

Call centers have always guided agents through call flows. In the past, this was done by reading instructions and forcing our agents to make on-the-fly decisions. The new model for call flow guidance tends more to sophisticated scripting engines. Scripting shifts the burden of making decisions away from the frontline agents and puts it in the hands of supervisors and managers who can work with clients to determine and agree on the optimum call flow. The role of scripting will continue to expand and grow to include scripting of the dispatch process and Web-connectivity to client systems.

Virtualization

Virtual call centers will become more prevalent in the coming years, especially as an element of the consolidation that is taking place in the call center industry. Virtual call centers will be much more flexible than traditional call centers which are constrained by their locations, floor space, and physical agent positions. Virtual call centers will utilize collocated call center solutions and remote agents. Use of a collocated call center solution breaks the call center away from the physical constraints and overhead costs of a building, equipment room, and back-up power. The use of remote agents eliminates physical floor space requirements, heating and cooling, break rooms, agent computers, and, more importantly, allows much more flexible hour-by-hour staffing, greatly minimizing the biggest non-essential expense a call center faces, the overhead of idle labor.

Shared services

Many call centers are forming partnerships with other call centers with the goal of sharing client calls to form one large borderless call center. Sharing client calls can greatly expand the call volume capacity of participating call centers, allowing each call center to market to larger clients with the assurance they will have the capacity to meet the client’s traffic requirements. There are two aspects to client sharing: redirecting or overflowing of calls, which can be accomplished through arrangements with telephone carriers and can be enhanced through use of VoIP-based SIP trunking, and the sharing of client scripts and data. The use of Web scripting and client sharing tools, such as those available with AMTELCO’s Intelligent Series, can assist call centers in implementing this business expansion strategy.

Call forwarding

One-number call forwarding has been gaining popularity for several years. This trend will continue and will pick up steam in the years ahead. The driving factor for this shift is cost savings, both in terms of telephone carrier costs and potential tax savings if proposed surcharges (new taxes) on phone numbers are enacted. One-number call forwarding allows call centers to eliminate the vast majority of DID numbers by keying on the calling number, called number or forwarded number of each call. Call center systems that can read any of these call fields on a client-by-client basis, provide big benefits to their owners.

Disaster planning

Disaster recovery has become a major focus of the call center industry across all vertical markets. This trend will continue. Disaster recovery solutions may be put in place by call centers within their infrastructure to provide redundancy of essential call center components. It may also be implemented by partnering with their vendor on hosted disaster recovery solutions. A recent example of the power of partnering with a call center vendor for disaster recovery is the situation that occurred at a Midwest call center that lost all telephone connectivity for several days when a major cable was cut by a construction crew. The call center worked with its phone carrier to quickly redirect calls to an emergency backup system at AMTELCO’s corporate headquarters in McFarland, Wisconsin. This kept the call center in business during a situation that stretched into days and could have been catastrophic. Every call center should be making such disaster recovery plans.

VoIP technology

Voice over Internet Protocol (VoIP) will continue to become more prevalent in the call center industry. The growth of VoIP will benefit call centers looking to expand on their use of remote agents, by providing low-cost audio connectivity that is available virtually anywhere. Over the next few years, we’ll start to see VoIP take hold on the trunking side of the business. Call centers will begin replacing their existing PRI ISDN spans with VoIP-based SIP trunks and will find them to be cost effective and reliable. SIP trunks provide many benefits to call centers, including cost savings, nationwide local numbers, and more flexibility in overflowing calls to partner call centers and rerouting calls for disaster recovery situations.

Soft Switching

There is an emerging trend towards software-based switching in the telecom industry. Software-based switching utilizes a computer’s central processor to manage switching functions rather than CTI board-based processors and DSP resources. One of the challenges of software-based switching has been to match the scalability and reliability of hardware-based switching. This is still a work in progress with open-source PBX’s such as Asterisk leading the way. While we may not see mainstream call centers banking their entire business on soft switching for quite some time, we will see call centers utilizing soft switching for specialized functions and applications. These software-based switching solutions will continue to advance and become more prevalent in the call center industry.

Soft Agents

One soft switch-related opportunity for our industry will be the emergence of switch independent soft agents, such as AMTELCO’s Infinity Soft Agent, that are capable of integrating with any third-party PBX or ACD system. This will give call center owners much more flexibility in selecting their switching platforms and will open up the opportunity to connect directly to client PBX’s and ACD’s.
Change is inevitable and not to be feared. It’s one of the exciting things about the call center industry. We are constantly forced to reshape our businesses to meet ever changing client demands. I guess that’s why we like what we do so much.

(Kevin Beale is director of software research and development for AMTELCO and 1Call)

Pro Show Provides an Easy Way to Remind Patients About Upcoming Appointments and Eliminate “No Shows!”

2011-11-17T14:57:00.003-06:00

Healthcare organizations must constantly contend with patients who miss their scheduled appointments without notifying the physician’s office. These “no show” appointments cost thousands of dollars in wasted resources and staff. 1Call’s Pro Show Automated Appointment Reminder application helps healthcare organizations be proactive by reminding patients in advance, saving time, saving money, and increasing staff productivity. Pro Show is available as an on-site or remotely hosted solution.

1Call’s Pro Show can remind patients via home phone, mobile phone, e-mail, and text messages. Pro Show can send reminders instantly when the information is received, or they can be scheduled to be sent 72 hours, 48 hours, 24 hours, or any amount of time prior to the appointments. In addition to reminders for patients, Pro Show can also be used to remind physicians and staff members about upcoming meetings, events, classes, and for virtually any type of notification service needed. Pro Show offers multilingual capabilities, helping healthcare organizations ensure they can use it for even more patients, physicians, and staff members. Since Pro Show is automated, staff members that were assigned to call patients to remind them of their upcoming appointments can now work on other needed tasks in the organization.

Pro Show features built-in flexibility, efficiency and convenience, ensuring that it meets the specific needs of each healthcare organization. The types of notification, and number of attempts can be customized for each recipient. The time of day, and the days of the week that Pro Show can send reminders can also be customized for each recipient, eliminating late night, early morning, weekend and holiday reminders. For children’s appointments, Pro Show adjusts the prompts to be geared towards the patient’s parent or guardian. Pro Show keeps track of the outcomes of each notification attempt, giving healthcare organizations the data needed for accurate reports and statistics.
Healthcare organizations are currently using Pro Show to make thousands of automated appointment reminder calls, text message reminders, and e-mail reminders each month. These organizations have reported a significant reduction of patient no shows. Since patients who miss their appointments typically need to reschedule their appointments, an added benefit of Pro Show in these organizations is a considerable reduction in the number of people being placed on waiting lists.

1Call President Tom Curtin said, “Pro Show helps healthcare organizations keep their waiting rooms full, keeping their employees more productive while also increasing revenue for their organizations. Because of this, using Pro Show keeps both administrators and physicians happy.”

Technorati Tags: appointment reminders,medical appointments,medical appointment reminders,doctor appointment reminders,sms appointment reminders,text message appointment reminders,hospital appointment reminders,physician appointment reminder,automated appointment reminders,automatic appointment reminders

1Call Ushers In The Next Generation Of Cloud-Based Scheduling Applications With miOnCall

2011-02-08T10:14:00.001-06:00

Recently, we have worked with customers and prospects that manually keep track of oncall scheduling information using binders and spreadsheets to organize all types of schedules. This method works, but I think a few questions need to be asked when taking this approach: 1.) How many people-hours does it take to create and maintain schedules this way? 2.) Is there a more efficient way of creating, maintaining and sharing oncall schedules?

When speaking with healthcare customers and prospects we found out that it IS very time consuming to create and maintain ANY type of schedule. In many instances overnight hospital personnel create and assemble oncall binders with paper schedules, and guess what? As soon as these binders are distributed and starting to be used by hospital personnel, they are rendered out of date. Changes to these schedules start immediately because of schedule swaps, weather emergencies or ill personnel that can’t cover their assigned schedules. Eventually, the out of date oncall scheduling information leads to errors like contacting the wrong doctor at the wrong time. It’s the nature of the beast when it comes to relying on paper schedules.

I think 1Call has come up with an answer for the second question: Is there a more efficient way of creating, maintaining and sharing oncall schedules? And that answer is Yes!

The answer is miOnCall.

The subscription-based miOnCall application is a powerful, flexible and completely secure cloud-based oncall scheduling application that makes it easy to assign schedule coverage, view schedule coverage, and dispatch messages. The miOnCall schedules are available to physicians and staff via Web access, can be synched with Outlook® calendars, and accessed with AMTELCO’s miOnCall App, available on the Apple® iTunes® store for the iPhone®, iPad™, and iPod touch®. miOnCall is perfect for small and large doctors groups, clinics and large healthcare organizations. Contact 1Call about miOnCall at info@miOnCall.com or visit www.miOnCall.com to subscribe for service.

Matt Everly is the Marketing Director for Amtelco’s 1Call Healthcare Division and can be reached at maeverly@1call.com

Technorati Tags: Oncall scheduling,web oncall,call scheduling,oncall app,iPhone,Blackberry,on-call,on call

Leveraging the Power of Scripted Call Navigation in a Hospital Call Center

2010-11-17T10:29:00.001-06:00

“Easily guiding operators through call processing and data collection”

1Call has hundreds of hospitals using the Infinity call center system to process calls. Many of these users are starting to see the value of using the power of Infinity's Scripted Call Navigation for intelligent data collection. Similar to using a GPS that guides us to our destination, Infinity Scripted Call Navigation easily guides operators through the entire process of handling each caller's needs and collecting the data that your organization needs.

Simplified Set Up

Scripted Call Navigation is not only a powerful call processing tool, but it is completely customizable by the user. Starting with the basic scripts that are included, you can add exactly the information they need, such as protocols, detailed up-to-the-minute information, and external database integration that is unique to your healthcare organization. These tools empower you to create scripts on-the-fly or easily modify a script to be more user-friendly for operators and to increase efficiency and reduce errors. The drag-and-drop script elements make it easy for you to master the script creation process and make it as “fancy” as you'd like.

Built-In Scripted Call Navigation Tools

The 1Call Infinity Scripted Call Navigation uses built-in intelligence and one-stop-shop integration tools to give your operators everything they need to process all the types of call they handle during a shift. These tools include:

Spell checker
Zip code look-up
Credit card formatting
Valid e-mail verification
On-call and departmental schedules
Contact methods based on time of day and day of the week
Free-form palettes
Web integration
Data security tools

Easily Create Scripts

In addition to the included scripts, 1Call customers can access a script library, provided by 1Call, to help them easily build the customized navigation scripts they need. Completed scripts can also be uploaded to the library, for use by other 1Call customers.

Uses in a Hospital Call Center

Code calls, physician-to-physician, and patient-to-physician referral are a few of the many examples of call types that are currently using 1Call's Scripted Call Navigation to streamline call processing, collect pertinent data, eliminate errors, and also keep the customers happy.

When using Scripted Call Navigation, operators only see the information they need to successfully navigate though the particular call they are currently handling. By presenting the proper data to the operators, you reduce the time it would take them to sort though binders, note pads or access external data sources to find exactly what was needed at a particular point during a call. Thus, time is saved, errors are reduced, and operator training time is slashed substantially.

Because of the many benefits, and taking advantage of Web-based Scripted Call Navigation, it's easy to see how scripts can easily be used – by operators in the call center, online by staff, and even online by patients – to handle needs for other departments in an organization, such as Class Registration, Patient Registration, as a smart forms template and as a general “intelligent” data collection and navigation tool.

Matt Everly is the marketing director for Amtelco’s 1Call healthcare division and can be reached at maeverly@1call.com

Technorati Tags: Hospital call center,operator services,scripted call navigation,hospital switchboard,code calls,AMTELCO,1Call,physician referral,agent call scripting,call branching,inbound call processing,healthcare

AnswerStat News and Info: AnswerStat magazine is on Facebook

2010-08-04T13:59:00.000-05:00

AnswerStat News and Info: AnswerStat magazine is on Facebook

1Call Integrating Social Media with RED ALERT Notification System

2010-06-14T15:58:00.001-05:00

As the number of hospitals and healthcare organizations continue to embrace social media increases system developers and vendors need to adapt as well. AMTELCO’s 1Call Division as taken the next step toward helping their customers by integrating with social media outlets.

1Call’s RED ALERT system allows messages and notifications to be sent to a few or a large group of recipients based on a particular disaster, incident, event or changing condition. In the past when an alert was triggered, messages were sent to pagers, email addresses, mobile phones (sms or voice), fax machines or land-line phones. Recently our developers used the Twitter application programming interface (API) as a bridge to incorporate some popular Social Media outlets as part of RED ALERT’s message delivery capabilities. Now hospital and healthcare organizations using RED ALERT can not only notify first responders, but it can also deliver information to their Twitter, Blog and Facebook followers when alerts are triggered.

Social Media has been used in the past to keep people informed during events. As an integrated part of RED ALERT, administrators can use RED ALERT as a single point to post messages or share information with Social Media outlets such as Twitter and Facebook as well as send messages to traditional communication devices. Integrating Social Media with traditional platforms will help our hospital customers communicate with many more people than in the past. Now, events such as changing weather conditions, flu season information, disasters, health news, wellness class information and emergency room wait times can be handled by RED ALERT and the Social Media integration to get information to anyone that wants it, and from whatever source they choose to receive it from.

For More information on RED ALERT visit http://www.redalertsystem.com/, call 800.380.7345 or send an email to info@redalertsystem.com.

Matt Everly is the marketing director for Amtelco’s 1Call healthcare division and can be reached at maeverly@1call.com

Technorati Tags: Emergency Notification System,Alerts,Notifications,Responders,Disaster,Response,AMTELCO,1Call,RED ALERT,Social Media

1Call Introduces OnTeam Scheduling and Instant Messaging Tool

2010-03-21T14:05:00.000-05:00

1Call introduced OnTeam Scheduling, an advanced workforce-scheduling module that automatically and quickly creates complex schedules. This module generates the elaborate schedules needed for each department, helping ensure staff members are scheduled at the appropriate times each day. It features simplified setup, with custom shifts and custom rules that work together to quickly create the detailed schedules. For example, a nurse scheduled for a 24-hour on-call shift on Monday can be automatically scheduled off on Tuesday and Wednesday. The flexibility of the shifts and rules makes it easy to meet each department’s unique scheduling requirements.

Amtelco president Tom Curtin said, "With a single click, the OnTeam Scheduling module saves an amazing amount of time. Knowing that it can take two people as many as three days to manually schedule a single department each month, the days and hours of time saved is truly astonishing." The module is Web-based, and integrates with Microsoft Outlook calendars, giving users convenient access. It functions as a stand-alone module, and integrates with 1Call Infinity systems.

1Call also introduced the new Infinity IS Messenger to provide real-time chat capabilities for a number of 1Call applications, including Infinity telephone agent, soft agent, Infinity IS supervisor, and the MiteyMite desktop application. With IS Messenger, operators can send and receive instant text chat messages with supervisors, other operators, and MiteyMite users. IS Messenger also allows MiteyMite users to chat directly with other MiteyMite users. Conversations can be held with one individual or multiple participants. Each chat is displayed in a separate window, allowing users to easily switch between conversations.

When used with the Infinity IS Directory View Action, operators can screen calls for individuals, using IS Messenger to announce the call and receive immediate instructions. Complete message histories, including both sides of a chat, are maintained for all conversations. "Chat is such an accepted manner of communications," Curtin stated, " that it only makes sense to apply chat to MiteyMite in the healthcare market as another way to communication with personnel in real time."

For more information contact 1Call at 800-225-6035, info@1call.com, or www.1call.com.

Amtelco Intelligent Soft Agent System with Asterisk | callcentersky | call center software | call center training

2010-03-11T15:41:00.003-06:00

Amtelco Intelligent Soft Agent System with Asterisk | callcentersky | call center software | call center training

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From the Feb/March issue of AnswerStat Magazine

2010-03-09T10:18:00.003-06:00

Sometimes Time is the Best Medicine

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Appointment Scheduling in Today’s Call Center

2010-02-26T15:10:00.001-06:00

By Ken Marty

March 2010

Almost all businesses require some type of appointments, and call center businesses are no exception. What is an appointment, anyway, but just a complex way to look at a schedule?

In the “old days” before the personal computer, you bought the time-tested appointment book – or even a simple notebook or binder – and promptly started taking appointments, writing down names and blocking out time with a combination of Xs, slashes, and arrows. Of course, it was always full of eraser marks, Wite-out (remember that stuff?), and the everlasting coffee ring when the book was used as a coaster several times during the day.

At the end of the day came the unbelievable delivery of this information to the customer, probably making copies and either faxing them off or storing them until the client picked them up, or even worse, trying to relay all of the newly acquired appointment information over the phone.

Today things are not all that much different, but there are better methods to achieve the same result in our more professional, twenty-first century world. The same information still needs to be recorded, changes still need to be made, and the delivery of information still must take place. Recording the information has become much more complex, but the end result increases efficiency at least twofold. I have yet to see the elimination of the coffee ring, but at least with these more modern methods the client won’t have to see it.

What information needs to be collected? There are two kinds: information about the shift and information about the resources involved. The shift is a no-brainer; it’s the start time and end time (or the start and duration of the appointment). The resources, on the other hand, tend to take on a life of their own.

Normally, everyone thinks of the resource as a person or some contact, but that’s not always the case. The resource may represent needed equipment, another vendor, or a customer, but the resource might also be the location where the appointment will occur. This will all depend on what your client requires. An appointment can include multiple resources, but it must include at the least one – otherwise, what’s the point?

The resource can and will become a more complex issue when you start factoring in items such as vacation time, sick time, and whether or not to allow double-booking. Taking that one step further, each resource probably will need several ways to be contacted. Of course, once you start talking about how to notify someone it always leads to some hierarchy of how and when he or she needs to be reached; such as, “Call my cell first. If I don’t answer, call me at home, but always send me an email and text me twenty-four hours before the appointment.”

Therefore, you can see that the shift element of an appointment is quite simple and straightforward; it’s the resource who has become accustomed to using a cell phone, BlackBerry, or a Web browser that needs to be won over and probably will prove to be the biggest headache for you. But it’s that resource who pays the bill, so you have to deal with it.

Once an appointment is taken, it can lead to another issue: whether to also book a “recurring” or “follow-up” appointment days, weeks, or months in advance. This makes it imperative for the appointment-scheduling package to be equipped with flexible searching options in order to quickly and precisely determine the next available open appointment.

Then there’s the issue of how appointment changes are made. We’d all like to think that things are written in stone and will never change, but the fact is that everything changes. With today’s technology, changes are more global than ever. Everyone has access to the Internet – these days, who doesn’t have a cell phone with Internet access?

A cancellation or appointment change should alert all parties involved in real time so adjustments can be made with everyone on the same page. This could be performed by allowing each party to confirm or deny a change request with the click of a button, a response to a text message, or a simple “yes/no” to an IVR announcement. If an appointment is canceled, the resources from another scheduled appointment, whether later in the day or week, could be contacted with the opportunity to move to an earlier time, all without human interaction.

The final step of the appointment-scheduling process is the delivery of information. The appointment schedule is really geared to being the input mechanism of the process. For a total solution, it needs to take advantage of other systems such as IVR calls, SMS or email messages, or even Web site.

IVR, SMS, and email are excellent ways of communicating with customers and receiving feedback to be applied to appointments. A Web site is really the icing on the cake by providing anyone in the know with the ability to make changes or see at a glance when the next appointment occurs.

There are many Web-based appointment-scheduling packages available today, but finding one that integrates well with an existing call center system is the trick. A Web-driven appointment schedule empowers clients to handle their day-to-day business. It can provide different views of the schedule (daily, weekly, monthly) plus the ability to handle any changes a client would like to make, all in real time. It can even provide the client with the ability to run reports against their appointment schedule or, even better, to see at a glance confirmed or cancelled appointments. Moreover, the best part is that the capability is provided by the call center and is tied directly to their account.

Appointment scheduling will never be a one-size-fits-all part of life. Each client is going to want it done their way and will expect different options. Clients really don’t care how the technology works; they’re more focused on the services provided to them. That’s where a call center has the opportunity to distinguish itself from its competition by providing additional services with appointment scheduling, such as IVR reminders and confirmations, SMS text, and email notifications.

Ken Marty is a software engineer at Amtelco and was the principal designer of Amtelco’s several scheduling solutions for call centers.

This article is from the March 2010 version of Connections Magazine. A pdf version of the issue can be found at Connections March 2010

Technorati Tags: 1Call,AMTELCO,Call Centers,Appointment Scheduling,Connections Magazine

Scripting a Better Work Environment for Your Agents

2010-02-10T14:16:00.000-06:00

By David Michael Drenk

“Hal, can you transfer me to Dr. Smith?”

“I’m sorry, Dave. I’m afraid I can’t do that.”

Attitudes about message scripting differ in the call center industry. Some call center managers and business owners want to make sure each call is scripted so tightly that there is no room for agents to make mistakes, but others don’t want to limit their agents’ ability to make decisions and deal with unusual situations.

Some clients require a strict protocol without deviation, but if you are a manager who considers your employees your biggest asset, you have the right idea. Fortunately, message scripting can actually make your agents’ lives easier in many ways without hindering their ability to use their skills.

Computers are great, but they aren’t as great as people. A blog or a photo posted on Facebook and emailed to an ever-growing list of friends doesn’t beat a one-on-one conversation. Callers may not have time to chat about the weather when they contact your call center, but they do want someone to listen to what they have to say. Message scripting doesn’t have to be used to feed agents every line of a conversation; it also can be used in much simpler ways.

With scripting software, you can use “required” and “non-required” fields to control just how much of a message is scripted. If you make the important fields “required,” agents know which pieces of information a client insists upon, like a callback number or the caller’s last name, even if you aren’t dictating the whole conversation. This makes life easier for the agents because they are reminded when they skip a crucial field.

Scripts also can be used to validate data, such as making sure that a phone number isn’t missing any digits, an email address is in the correct format, or the number of items in an order isn’t outside of the minimum or maximum limit. Scripts can be designed to display helper text that lets agents know immediately when entries are invalid so the correct information is gathered while the caller is still on the phone.

“Hal, can you tell me who’s on-call?”

“I’m sorry, Dave. I don’t have enough information.”

Besides guiding the agent, message scripting can provide the agent with resources. Scripts can automatically pull information from Automatic Number Identification (ANI), directories, on-call schedules, and databases based on which number is being called, the time of day, caller responses, or options selected by the agent. These tools give agents information about the caller and your clients without making them take time to find it.

Scripts can present a client’s status or display information about who is on-call without making agents go to an on-call schedule. The message script can use this information to control what steps are taken, but it also can simply display the information so agents can use it in whatever way applies.

Another useful scripting tool is advanced data handling. Message scripting can handle complex math formulas, data comparisons, text manipulation, and date and time functions. Use scripts to total order quantities, apply discounts, calculate sales tax, and set the time for a callback reminder.

Why risk offending callers by asking their age when you can ask for their birth date and have the script determine if they are under 18 or over 65? Moreover, why not tell agents if the office is open instead of having agents compare the time to the office hours? If the office is in another time zone, your agents don’t need to remember to add or subtract an hour if the script does it for them.

Advanced data handling can save your agents a lot of time and let them focus on the caller.

“Hal, has the address of the Kansas office changed?”

“Dave, I have a feeling we’re not in Kansas anymore.”

Remember the impression the Land of Oz made on Dorothy when she stepped out of her black-and-white house? How about adding a little color to your agents’ lives? A powder-blue background can let agents know which client accounts require extra care, and colored-coded text to distinguish between client information and dispatching instructions can make their jobs easier.

Agents often feel insulted when every piece of critical information is displayed in flashing red print. However, if your agents know every time something new is added to an account it will be in forest-green text for three weeks, they’ll watch for that and won’t get stuck in a routine. Combine colors with calculations and you won’t have to tell agents that the client is gone for the day; the violet message box will say it without words.

“Hal, what if this had been an emergency?”

“Dave, quite honestly, I wouldn’t worry myself about that.”

Branching is a powerful scripting tool that can change the fields or information displayed based on a variety of conditions. If your message forms have labels like, “If yes, list why,” or, “If an emergency, get location,” you could use some branching. Scripting makes it easy to compare a caller’s response to a list of results, perform certain actions on specific days and at specific times, or simply display information relevant to the reason for the call.

Branching can be used to change the call flow, but in a less stringent way, it also can be used to simplify the information presented to agents. If you have a list of information that only needs to be gathered in emergencies, don’t make your agents sift through it on every call. Tie it to a button or a “yes or no” option, making it available to agents only when they need it.

Message scripting doesn’t have to be used to control your agents. Message scripting can be used to make their jobs easier without taking away their ability to use their talents. The tools are available to make a better work environment for your agents and better interactions with your callers.

“Hi, Dave, this is Krista. Sorry, Hal doesn’t have the best people skills. Dr. Smith is in surgery, but Dr. Johnson is covering for him. Do you want me to transfer you to Dr. Johnson, or would you like me to email your contact information to the office?”

“Go ahead and email my contact information. And thanks, Krista. It was nice talking with you.”

David Michael Drenk is a technical writer for Amtelco, where he writes software manuals and designs customized message scripts. David also has written for “Event DV” and “Wisconsin Engineer” magazines.

Technorati Tags: Hospital,call center,communications,scripting,amtelco,1call

Healthcare Intelligent On-Call Schedules-going from paper to a web based system

2010-01-06T09:26:00.002-06:00

Many hospitals believe it or not still use a manual paper-based method to create, manage and use on-call schedules that follow doctors and nurses that are on-call for a particular shift. Many of these schedules are assembled by departments and sent to call center or switchboard operators that assemble all of the schedules during the overnight shift. We have worked with hospitals that had over 150 on-call schedules that had to be collated, assembled and bound in folders for the following day. To say that is inefficient is an understatement.

There are two major problems with a paper based on-call scheduling system. First is that as soon as its printed and bound, a change will be made rendering it out of date with incorrect information, meaning all of the distributed binders need to be updated by hand. The second problem is that the information only lives at the location of the binder. If a physician or nurse wants to know their schedule they need to call someone that has a binder or physically email have the information to each person. Both of these problems lead to inefficiency and waste.

By automating your on call scheduling system you solve both of these problems as well as gain functionality that you would never get with a paper based on call scheduling system. Automating your on-call schedules and creating web access you allow departments to create and update their own on-call schedules, allow physicians and nurses to view their schedules virtually anywhere in the world. Also, you can take advantage of the electronic format which allows paging, calling, emailing, and viewing of on-call schedules from any web-enabled device.

Our customers have helped us fine-tune our automated on call scheduling package. We have developed dozens of new features since rolling out this product over ten years ago. These features are now a vital part of the daily communications in hundreds of hospitals that use the Intelligent Series on-call scheduling package. Automated on-call scheduling packages have developed over time and are robust with features and most can handle even the most difficult, unique and detailed on-call schedules.

Matt Everly is the marketing director for Amtelco’s 1Call healthcare division and can be reached at maeverly@1call.com

Technorati Tags: healthcare,hospital,call center,communications,on-call scheduling,messaging

Case study: Communications-enabled business processes

2009-12-04T09:42:00.001-06:00

Case study: Communications-enabled business processes

Hospital embraces social media and keeps costs down | Article | Homepage articles

2009-12-02T06:50:00.001-06:00

Hospital embraces social media and keeps costs down | Article | Homepage articles

Vodafone: Not when but how for wireless health

2009-12-01T10:08:00.002-06:00

Vodafone: Not when but how for wireless health

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Healthcare Call Centers-Coping with Budget Cuts

2009-11-13T14:59:00.002-06:00

(Healthcare CALL CENTERS)–Coping with Budget cuts

Timely Tips for Telephone Triage Nurses

2009-11-11T11:30:00.001-06:00

While use of computerized guidelines is the standard of care in telephone triage, nurses can sometimes rely too heavily on these decision support tools and miss essential elements of a patient's problem. In her article in the September/October 2009 issue of AAACN ViewPoint, Carol Rutenberg notes that these tools should be used as blueprints, and that the nursing process should be used as in other types of nursing. She offers tips to adjust the nursing process for telephone triage nurses.

During assessment, the nurse can glean key information not only from the caller's words, but also from listening to the patient's breathing and speech, Rutenberg says. Callers can also provide objective measurements such as temperature, blood pressure, and weight as well as describe lacerations and amount of bleeding. Rutenberg writes, "A good rule of thumb is that anything nurses can do with their eyes, hands, or nose, callers can do…with adequate direction from the nurse."

During each call, the telephone triage nurse must identify a problem as emergent, urgent, or routine, develop a plan of care that the patient is likely to follow, and implement that plan. This continuity of care is an essential part of the telephone triage nurse's role.

Finally, to evaluate the interaction, the nurse must have a plan to determine if the patient got better. If not, the nurse must reassess him or her, revise the plan of care, implement the new plan, and reevaluate. Rutenberg says doing a thorough assessment, anticipating the worst possible scenario, and erring on the side of caution are key to successful telephone triage.

("Telephone Triage: Timely Tips"; Carol Rutenberg, RNC-BC, MNSc; AAACN ViewPoint; September/October 2009; www.aaacn.org)

How unified communications can improve the contact centre | Call Centre Helper

2009-11-04T11:28:00.000-06:00

How unified communications can improve the contact centre | Call Centre Helper

This is a very good article on both Unified Communications and Collaboration in a call center. 1Call has a hospital customer that has all of their operators working from home. Since they can't communicate verbally or with hand signals they rely on instant messaging to communicate with each other. 1Call is continuing to build communications tools to accommodate our hospital customers that are moving toward off premise or home based call center and switchboard operators.

Upgrading to VoIP in the Call Center

2009-11-02T15:32:00.000-06:00

This article was written by Paul Hanson with AMTELCO and published in the November 2009 issue of Connections Magazine Connections Magazine November 2009

Voice over Internet Protocol (VoIP) technology is here to stay. It has made steady progress in replacing traditional telephone lines in businesses and in homes. It eventually will dominate the marketplace as more people embrace the benefits and features of VoIP technology.

Using software on your call center's workstations along with a broadband Internet connection allows you to bypass the traditional local, long distance, and international telephone carriers. This can result in significant savings on operational costs. But it would be costly to jump into the deep end of the VoIP pool feet first. Implementing VoIP in a call center a little at a time enables you to learn the lay of the land and pick and choose your changes.

You essentially are faced with two choices: VoIP-enabling your current equipment, or building up a new system through a separate gateway. There are advantages and reliability gains in having VoIP technology native to your existing call center system. You can use your current equipment by adding a VoIP interface board or similar bridging device to your current system configuration; a number of manufacturers offer these products.

When considering this option, look for a product that is certified to integrate with multiple switch providers. Consider the vendor's commitment to developing its VoIP solutions, and pay close attention to the product's call capacity and its ease of integration with your current equipment.

How did it all start? The history of VoIP can be traced to 1994 when a small Israeli company, VocalTec, developed and patented what many believe to be the first Internet-based telephony software in the marketplace.

VocalTec's Internet Phone software was designed to run on home PCs and, like many of the PC phones available today, it utilized sound cards, microphones, and speakers. The VocalTec solution was built on the H.323 protocol instead of the Session Initiation Protocol (SIP) that dominates the field today.

VocalTec had a measure of success with Internet Phone, which led to a highly successful IPO in 1996. VocalTec continues today as a provider of VoIP-based solutions. Its media servers and gateways compete in the global marketplace with product offerings from Avaya, Cisco, Nortel, Siemens, and other heavy hitters in the computer telephony league.

A major obstacle facing VoIP in 1994 was the minimal market penetration of broadband service. Consequently, VocalTec's groundbreaking software required a modem, which resulted in poor voice quality when compared to a normal telephone call. Nonetheless, by 1998 VoIP traffic represented approximately 1 percent of all U.S. voice traffic. The roster of entrepreneurs creating devices which enabled PC-to-phone and phone-to-phone communication steadily expanded.

Technology giants such as Cisco and Lucent began introducing equipment that could route and switch VoIP traffic. As a result, VoIP traffic accounted for more than 3 percent of all U.S. voice traffic by 2000.

Audio quality issues were rectified as methods were developed to prioritize VoIP traffic over data traffic and to ensure reliable, clear sounding, unbroken telephone calls. Consequently, revenue from VoIP equipment sales reached $3 billion by 2005 and topped $8.5 billion by the end of 2008. This growth was primarily driven by the increasing availability of low-cost unlimited calling plans and the abundance of enhanced and useful telephony features made possible by VoIP technology.

How do I choose? The deciding factor in selecting a VoIP service provider is Quality of Service (QoS). Choose a provider with a reputation for supplying. Make sure your call center's network is set up to handle it.

VoIP services tend to be less expensive than the same types of services provided under the old TDM transport media. Due to the nature of the transport mechanism, telcos and governments tend to view VoIP services as data traffic, so taxation and regulation are less than that imposed on traditional telephone traffic.

That's not to say that telephone-operating companies are not catching on. Operators of wholesale and retail long-distance networks are migrating their legacy trunking networks to VoIP-based Next-Generation Networks (NGNs) to reduce their operating costs and enhance their service flexibility. At the same time, VoIP service providers are looking for more cost-effective solutions to the task of connecting their networks to the Public Switched Telephone Network (PSTN). This all adds up to making acquiring VoIP technology through your telco considerably more flexible.

Now call centers can operate telephone numbers from any LATA, geographical areas in which the local telephone companies are permitted to carry both local calls and long distance toll calls. This makes it possible for VoIP-equipped call centers to get essentially free calls when the calls terminate "on-net" within your local telco LATA.

VoIP also brings greater usage and efficiency to your telco access facilities. Where today a PRI circuit can carry twenty-three conversations before rolling over traffic to another circuit, VoIP technology presents a much larger pipe.

The following call volumes for various VoIP connections are conservative computations. The g.711 Codec uses 64K per talk path and is compatible with faxing. The g.729 Codec uses 14K per talk path and is not compatible with faxing.

      Pipe                 g.711                g.729
      1.5 Mbps          24 calls            110 calls
      10 Mbps           156 calls           714 calls
      100 Mbps         1560 calls         7140 calls

When buying a single VoIP pipe, you will spend less per unit of traffic and pay less in local, state, and federal taxes. Plus, with a VoIP pipe the VoIP-to-data traffic ratio is elastic. When call volumes are low, data traffic gets to use the express lane. Typically, this type of access also allows near real-time bandwidth expansion during the course of a phone call.

A VoIP platform provided by your telco usually is associated with a highly functional Web portal that enables a much greater degree of monitoring and control of your account and services, using only a convenient Web browser.

What's in it for me? A number of opportunities are presented once you have your call center on the VoIP fast track:

You are well on the way to creating a multisite phone system.
You are in a position to convert your operator audio from the hardwired traditional method to a TCP/IP-based system.
You can bring in individual DID lines, or blocks of local DID numbers, from other cities and countries, creating a virtual global presence for your business.
You can backhaul an entire PRI circuit from a distant city to a switch in your home city.
You are situated to provide toll-free connections to the call center infrastructure for remote and work-at-home agents.
You are positioned to have the call center provide value-added call processing on inbound calls, depending on the additional capabilities of your VoIP gateway, such as one-number call forwarding.
You have the ability to create virtual tie-lines to network your site and share traffic with other call centers for higher volume clients.
You can establish a network-level fail-over system to redirect calls to an alternate location. Combined with one-number call forwarding and real-time switch backup, this will provide a level of redundancy and disaster preparedness that previously was beyond reach.

A word of caution, however: When you set up your VoIP infrastructure, take the time to make sure that calls coming into your system over the Internet cannot be routed back out to the PSTN via your PRI circuits and POTS lines. Monitor your VoIP traffic regularly with an eye for multiple calls to locations that doesn't concern your business.

Paul Hansen is a senior software developer for Amtelco. He was instrumental in the development of Amtelco's SIP-based VoIP call center products.

Vocera, Motorola create smartphone for hospitals

2009-10-27T12:20:00.001-05:00

Vocera, Motorola create smartphone for hospitals

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WFMY News 2's Flu Central Call Center Opens This Morning | digtriad.com | Triad, NC | The Good Morning Show News Article

2009-10-21T07:17:00.000-05:00

WFMY News 2's Flu Central Call Center Opens This Morning | digtriad.com | Triad, NC | The Good Morning Show News Article