virtual receptionist

Why Choose a Medical Answering Service? Benefits to Consider

team klientboost January 26, 2023

a medical answering service with a woman answering the phone

What is a medical answering service?

Medical answering services (MAS) are businesses that help medical practices and providers to connect with patients. They usually handle the appointment-making portion of the process, as well as some of the more basic medical services that doctors can’t or don’t want to handle themselves.

These companies ensure they have a qualified receptionist on duty at all times, even after-hours. The receptionist will manage incoming calls and appointment scheduling and answer questions from patients who call in. The receptionist will also work with the provider’s office staff to ensure that the practice’s needs are met, including ensuring patient information is updated for existing and new patients.

Statistics prove that currently, there’s a spike of up to 46% of consumers using live telephone answering services in the healthcare industry.

In this article, we will discuss the benefits of choosing a medical answering service.

Benefits of Choosing a Medical Answering Service

A healthcare answering service can assist with your business’s phone calls and take care of the messages you don’t need to be bothered with. Whether you’re a medical office or dentist, or a veterinary clinic, there are many benefits of choosing a live answering service, including the following.

Prevent Missed Calls

Today’s healthcare practitioners are constantly on the go and can’t always answer their phones, especially when they’re busy with patient care. When a practice chooses a medical call center, they gain access to more than just secretaries who can take messages. They also have a support system that helps them save hours answering, increase patient retention rates, and improve overall practice success.

When you choose a physician answering service, they can answer your phones while you’re with patients. They’ll take down any patient information you need and send in prescription refills, so you don’t have to be interrupted during business hours. This means that you won’t have to miss any important inbound calls.

Ensure HIPAA Compliance

If you have staff answering phones and taking patient calls, you need to make sure that they are familiar with the intricacies of HIPAA. A compliant medical answering service will help you avoid a breach of your patient’s privacy, as well as ensure that you can keep up with the changing physician regulations in this area.

Answering HIPAA-compliant services can help doctors, clinics, and other medical offices ensure compliance with the Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act. HIPAA was established in 1996 to protect patient’s health information as it flows through electronic systems and is shared between healthcare providers.

Greater Efficiency of Employees

When you choose a medical answering service, you give your employees the time they need to be as efficient as possible. By outsourcing your medical calls to an answering service, you free up the time that would have been spent taking those calls and let it be used for other more important things, like a consultation with doctors or researching the latest equipment for your practice. This way, everything runs more smoothly and efficiently, leaving all your callers happier.

When companies choose a medical answering service over a traditional receptionist, they can also gain benefits in terms of efficiency. A medical answering service allows doctors’ offices to provide more one-on-one care to their patients while still having the convenience of answering and messaging services. This is why many medical practices and hospitals around the country have turned to medical answering services.

Provide a Personal Touch to Your Calls

You can benefit from having a personal touch on every call. Most answering service representatives are trained to be professional and courteous so that patients will be greeted with a cheerful and helpful voice. They’ll also be told about any office policies or emergency procedures they may need to know, such as regarding payment policies or if the office is wheelchair-accessible.

In addition, an answering service can provide patients who prefer email and voicemail contact with your practice with information about how to submit their medical records online. They can also manage your appointment book so that no one is left wondering when they’re supposed to come in for an appointment.

Around the Clock Support

If you’re running a practice, choosing a medical answering service is a great way to ensure that patients can reach you 24/7, even if you’ve got your hands full with other business. The assistance provided by the best medical answering service providers can be invaluable for doctors and their staff. It’s also a great way to protect yourself from getting overwhelmed by stress in an emergency or an unexpected surge in patient volume.

The best medical answering service providers can help you to maintain a calm, professional demeanor when it matters most. They’ll take messages from patients and their families, triage them appropriately and route them back to the appropriate personnel as quickly as possible.

Better Assist Patients

Patients now have the option of seeing a doctor quickly within 24 hours or less because the medical answering service has been improved. This is very convenient for patients because they are not required to make medical appointments and do not have to wait long. Also, you don’t need to keep track of your schedule, and you can choose your appointment date and time.

Busy patients who do not have the luxury of waiting too long for medical assistance stand to benefit the most from this. You can also choose the day and time that suits you best, and you don’t need to worry about missing your appointment because the medical answering service will remind you about it in advance.

Increase Revenue

A virtual receptionist can save a business up to 78% in ROI. Not only that, a medical answering service can help ensure you don’t lose money by having calls go unreturned because they were not answered promptly.

You must answer all calls as soon as possible to reduce the possibility of no-shows or cancellations, leaving you with fewer appointments and less revenue. A virtual receptionist can also help you increase your revenue by booking more appointments and reducing no-shows. When a patient calls for an appointment, they first hear a friendly voice that helps them feel comfortable and confident in their decision to come in.

Gabbyville’s Medical Answering Service is the Solution for You

These days, people are busier than ever, and they will often call a doctor’s office only to find that the doctor is not in. With our medical answering service, we will ensure that your patients can be seen when they need to be seen.

Most medical offices need a medical answering service. Most patients who call your office will have a condition requiring treatment. By using a medical answering service, you can increase revenue by ensuring that your patients can receive the treatment they need, even if you are not in the office.

Gabbyville is different from most medical answering services because we are 100% dedicated to physicians and their needs. Our service is customized to fit each individual client’s needs and schedules. We provide HIPAA-compliant communication solutions for physicians and their staff members.

Get in touch with Gabbyville to get a quote on pricing and see the difference for yourself!

What is a Receptionist? Choosing the Best Fit for Your Business

team klientboost November 18, 2022

What is a receptionist?

A receptionist is the first point of contact in a company and typically handles the initial contact with a company’s clients and customers. They typically greet the visitors/customers at the front office, take messages, answer queries, and redirect calls.

A receptionist doesn’t only act as administrative support but also represents the entire organization by acting as the face of it. So they need to be professional, polite and able to handle negative comments from a client.

Receptionist Job Description

It is a receptionist’s responsibility to make sure correspondence and communication-related affairs go smoothly for the organization they work in. While the job description of a receptionist can vary greatly depending on the industry, they usually need to be professional, friendly, calm, and patient.

Apart from their educational qualifications, which may differ based on the nature of industry, their attitude and behavior should be kept in mind since they also represent the business. A great receptionist can not only help you in retaining your existing customers, but their positive impression can also attract new customers.

To qualify as a front desk receptionist, one should possess a bachelor’s degree or at least a high school diploma with good soft skills to perform administrative tasks and know how to use Microsoft Office.

A receptionist should have high attention to detail applied to each task he/she/they handle, whether it’s greeting visitors, answering telephone calls, or any other task. They should be prepared for almost anything, from handling a simple phone call or bookkeeping to knowing who to direct inquiries involving technical knowledge to.

General Responsibilities of a Receptionist

The primary objective of a receptionist should be customer satisfaction.

Receptionists are the front liners in a business. As technology advances, they have to know how to use it. Their duties include greeting visitors, managing the phone systems, scheduling appointments, taking messages, relaying information to other staff members, handling office equipment, making travel arrangements, and so on.

They can also work with clients by preparing contracts and handling paperwork and any other initial task before it is taken over by the respective department.

A good receptionist is well-organized with good multitasking skills. They have a good set of computer skills and know how to easily operate MS Office, can fill communication gaps and resolve miscommunication problems with good communication skills. Receptionists should also act as a bridge between the customers and the business by understanding and conveying the requirements of a customer to the relevant team members.

Answering Phones

Answering phone calls is a basic aspect of business operations but one of vital importance that shouldn’t be ignored. It’s crucial that calls are answered/returned as quickly as possible, to let your callers know that you value them.

Unanswered or ignored phone calls can cause adverse impacts on your business. You may miss important calls from potential leads or an existing customer looking for more information.

A receptionist is generally the first person a customer meets with. They make the first impression. Answering phone calls and redirecting them as required can help make a good one.

Accurate Message Taking

Customers generally make contact with a company while seeking information, placing orders, booking appointments, or for any other purpose which may possibly benefit the business in the long run. It is not practically possible for business owners to always be available. That is where a receptionist pitches in and takes messages on your behalf.

Understanding and communication skills of a receptionist play a vital role in receiving messages and forwarding the same. Incoming messages can be useless if recorded inaccurately. Thus a receptionist needs to be meticulous in order to perform the assigned job duties to perfection.

Scheduling Appointments

Every business runs on a pre-planned schedule. Schedules are not always fixed, and they may vary with time and needs. A potential client symbolizes new opportunities for every business so scheduling meetings with them is critical to landing more sales.

Time management is very important and as a business owner, you can make efforts to accommodate your visitors but there is only so much you can do. It is not logically possible for you to handle scheduling meetings with all your clients or stakeholders.

Scheduling appointments for your visitors is just as important as any other function and having the right receptionist can do the job. Your receptionist can make sure that you don’t end up overbooking yourself and make a potential client wait for hours on end. They can also ensure that you get enough time between appointments by handling your personal calendar.

In case you ever have an emergency and become unavailable, you need not worry about your appointments. Just send a word to your receptionist and all your engagements can be rescheduled at your convenience.

Managing Databases

Every business, over a period of time, creates, collects, and stores data for various purposes. Such information can range from simple client or employee details to a fully charted plan of future business activity.

Businesses need to manage information on a regular basis, in order to access and use them when needed. As important as information and database management is, you can not possibly spend all your time doing the same and that is where a receptionist comes into the picture.

A knowledgeable and well-trained receptionist can not only manage such information, but they can also sort them based on different categories for future searches. While managing and sorting existing data, they can also collect new information and keep your internal database up-to-date with high accuracy.

Verifying Insurance Claims and Information

When it comes to the matters of insurance and claims, verifying, collecting, and representing the right information is of utmost importance, especially when said information can affect you or your business’s profitability. This applies to any business but those working actively in the insurance industry can receive hundreds of claims every day (and not every one of them may be genuine).

Verification prevents individuals from lying about important facts, which can result in the loss of money through false claims on insurance policies. Thus, you have to be able to differentiate the truth from a lie. A well-trained receptionist can verify the source of information and claims while updating the same in your database.

Should You Hire an In-house or Virtual Receptionist?

An in-house receptionist is a full-time employee who is dedicated to answering phones and managing all customer inquiries. They’re typically trained in customer service and in being an administrative assistant. A virtual receptionist is hired through a third-party company that provides phone support services—a receptionist who works remotely and receives calls from your customers on your behalf.

Your typical in-house office receptionist can do all your preliminary tasks for you and make your workflow more efficient, but so can a virtual receptionist. With a virtual receptionist, all your calls can be answered under 30 seconds whereas there is a high chance of a call being missed by your in-house receptionist if they are on a lunch break.

Once you hire a full-time receptionist, you have to pay them their average salary regardless of the amount of work that comes their way. But that is not the case with virtual receptionists. You pay them only for the work done by them and based on the nature of tasks performed by them. Moreover, they are available 24/7 and 365 days a year.

A virtual receptionist is not only economical but also saves your time and resources. You need not train them personally for every task; you can just assign them the receptionist duties and carry on with your core business activities.

Choose Gabbyville’s Virtual Receptionists for Your Business

Meet your receptionist today by getting in touch with Gabbyville. Gabbyville’s virtual receptionists are present around the clock for you. Be it greeting your customers or answering their queries, it shall be done with a smile. Our trained professionals can turn the negative comments of your customer into positive feedback for your company.

Your virtual receptionists receive thorough training and come equipped with excellent customer service skills, trained for your company’s functions and policies. With their interpersonal skills, organizational skills and deep knowledge of your policies, they can answer queries with the utmost professionalism and to the fullest satisfaction of your clients.

With a versatile set of services to offer, Gabbyville can match your requirements and give you the right virtual receptionist with all the qualities you are looking for at a fair and reasonable price.

Get started right away!

7 Reasons Why Hiring a Virtual Receptionist Makes Logical, Financial Sense

admin August 30, 2016

In today’s tech-savvy times, we can order Indonesian takeout food with a click of a button. We can purchase a venti mochaccino with a quick scan of our iPhones.

Granted, it’s not how Back to the Future described it to be, but you have to admit, it’s a pretty great time to be alive — technologically speaking.

Of course, today’s wonders are not limited to acquiring sustenance and much-needed caffeine.

Technology has given us the ability to have our calls answered by friendly folks who work outside the four walls of our offices. These helpful men and women are called virtual receptionists, and they are all the rage with small-medium businesses — and for good reason, too.

If you haven’t heard of virtual receptionists yet and what they can offer a company, we’ve listed down 7 compelling reasons why hiring one would make logical, financial sense:

1. No excuse will get in the way — As a business owner, we’re sure you’ve heard the most creative to the most hardly thought of excuse in the book when it comes to absences and tardiness.

Virtual receptionists eliminate that awkward tango. For example, if you get virtual receptionist services from Gabbyville, you’ll get a team of dedicated virtual receptionists working for your business. So if one of the receptionists is sick (allergy season is right around the corner), the call will be routed straight to another virtual receptionist in your team.

Someone will always be there to pick up the phone during business hours. No excuse, no matter how valid, will get in the way of your business.

2. Focused workers are great workers — Sometimes, life just gets too darn busy. Even for your in-house receptionist, who may be balancing speaking to your clients in person, scheduling another client over the phone, and answering an important email one-handed.

Your front desk personnel may be too busy helping a client with necessary forms, while giving directions to another , that the phone is left unanswered. You may have just missed your biggest client to date.

With virtual receptionists working for your company who will answer all calls, book schedules, handle cancellations, answer frequently asked questions about your business, and make outbound calls, your in-house staff can focus on attending to the needs of your clients face-to-face, especially if you’re running a high-traffic clinic, dental office, or law firm.

All calls and all clients are handled professionally and efficiently. What a beautiful thing that is.

3. Dependable — During emergency situations (such as snowstorms, hurricanes, and yes, even Black Friday) when neither you nor your staff have a way of physically getting to your office to answer calls or reschedule appointments, having a virtual receptionist on your team truly comes in handy.

So even if the 6 train is down, you’re snowed in, or stuck in line at Walmart, someone will be there to pick up the phone or make important call-outs. Rain or shine, your business is able to serve your clients, which is needless to say, impressive.

Which brings us to our next reason.

4. Sound like a big shot — No matter what business you’re in, it is always imperative to impress your clients. And they can get finicky at times.

Some only give you one chance to make a good impression. And if their initial over-the-phone experience is sub par, they may find services elsewhere.

Say, you have a startup, and you think that your unique selling point is a great edge. But that’s not enough to bank on. You would need to get stellar customer service to get recognized. You’d be surprised how many customers make a jump from one company to the next based on how well or badly they are treated.

So even if you’re operating solo in a humble office in Queens, but have professional virtual receptionists fielding your calls and cheerfully answering important questions, you’ll sound like a big shot and quickly turn inquirers into bona fide loyal patrons.

At the end of the day, it boils down to how great you treat a customer and how great a customer feels about your company.

5. Save your time and office space — If you’re unwittingly tied to the office phone, trying to dodge calls from telemarketers, receiving long-winded yet unprofitable calls, and still, ending up missing important client calls, you’re not putting your time to good use.

The hours you spend on answering calls can be used to brainstorm a better business model, improve your product, create marketing collaterals, or put up valuable content on your website. And you can’t do that if you’re on the phone half the day.

As your VR answers all calls, schedules appointments, and calls clients up, you can focus on things that require your utmost attention to help elevate your business to its full potential.

Also, a virtual receptionist considerably frees up your office space. Have a team of professional receptionists work for you sans deskspace.

6. Pay for services and nothing else — We did the math for you: we found that you would have to shell out around $50,000.00 a year for an in-house receptionist. This amount covers base salary, health insurance, and social security, to name a few.

But what this doesn’t cover is the amount you lose when potential client calls are unanswered during lunch breaks, days off, unforeseen absences, and lateness. And the sad part is that there’s a huge chance that it’s bigger than 50 grand.

With virtual receptionists, the amount you’d have to pay for services is drastically smaller. In Gabbyville’s case, you would get a team of your very own virtual receptionists for the price of one.

Not only that, most virtual receptionist services are flexible. There are plans that would fit any business, big or small. A big HR plus: cancelling services are way easier and drama-free than firing out someone in person.

Did you stop reading this to pick up the phone? — Then maybe it’s time to get a great virtual receptionist, stat.

Four Surprising Reasons How A Virtual Receptionist Can Help Your Business Grow

admin April 20, 2015

Financially-speaking, a live virtual receptionist is a better option compared to a full-time employee who sits in the office for forty hours a week, whether or not, there are calls coming in. If this advantage is not enough to make you sign up, then you should read the rest of this article because it might help you with the decision-making process.

Your Personal Touch Is Not Personal Enough

As a business owner, you want to be on top of the customer relationship management process and personally speak to your customers or potential ones when they try to reach out.

Although that’s a very worthwhile and admirable move, chances are, there will be times when you just can’t entertain all of them. This is where the services of the said professionals will become handy. He/she will make sure that all calls will be answered in a calm and friendly manner and ensure that operations will push through as planned.

A Virtual Receptionist Is As Much A Professional As You Are

A professional receptionist is skilled at handling callers (no matter how irate they may be), scheduling appointments, customizing call greetings, and so much more! Simply put, a virtual receptionist has what it takes to professionally and courteously handle complex tasks.

She Makes You Look Successful

When calls are answered by a dedicated small business answering service provider, individuals on the other end make the impression of a well-run office that is made up experts. Furthermore, this will allow you to concentrate on important priorities and increase your productivity. In the long run, this can help create an overwhelming impression of success that is beyond question.

Conclusion:

To top it all up, no matter what type of business you are running, hiring a virtual receptionist can help your company process things faster and smoother. As we all know, an efficient and effectively run office is almost sure to grow. So, go ahead and give it a try because this is the simplest and best thing that you can do.