Secure Messaging app has now been updated to take advantage of the improvements in Android Jelly Bean.
Packed with performance improvements and stability enhancements that are in the Android Jelly Bean operating system, Ambs Call Center’s Startel Secure Messaging v1.4 is ready for your downloading pleasure in the Google Play store.
Interested in using the best secure text messaging solution available anywhere? Contact our sales department at (800)968-1181 for a demonstration.
The lifetime value of your customers is calculated by combining the total amount your customer will spend with your company over the course of time they patronize your business. The longer they stay with you – and the more they spend – the higher their customer value is.
Your business’s customer service has a significant impact both on length of tenure and amount spent. According to the 2012 American Express Global Customer Service Barometer, a positive customer service experience will cause customers to spend 13% more with a company, whereas a poor experience will cause 55% of customers to cease doing business with a company.
In order for your business’s customer service to positively impact lifetime customer value, it needs to expand into emerging technologies, improve how it reacts to negative feedback, and increase first call resolution across the board.
Provide Social Customer Service
Bluewolf predicts that the number of customers who attempt to engage customer service through social will grow by 53% in 2013 – but only 42% of customers will receive a response. If you aren’t using Facebook, Twitter, and other social media platforms for customer service, you are missing out on opportunities to increase customer lifetime value – as well as market to new customers.
Address Negative Feedback
Whether it’s in your call center, in your news feed, or in your face, negative feedback can’t be ignored. Gone unanswered, customers would rather leave your business than risk running into the same customer service issue. While you can’t please everyone, you can significantly improve customer experience – even in a bad situation – by addressing the problem appropriately.
Increase First Call Resolution
How many times does a customer have to contact you with a customer service issue before it is finally resolved? While First Call Resolution (FCR) is a rate traditionally monitored by inbound call centers, every business should take steps to improve how well they respond to customers.
Your business’s attitude towards customer service impacts how long your customers stay and how much they spend. If you ignore their feedback, don’t respond to their requests, and shuffle them off the phone as quickly as possible, they won’t stay with your company. By changing your attitude towards one that values customer experience and lifetime value, your customers will respond by staying longer and spending more.
Megan Webb-Morgan is a business blogger for B2B lead generation provider Resource Nation. She writes on a variety of business topics like customer service, sales, and startups. You can follow Resource Nation on Facebook and Twitter to learn the latest small business news, advice, and more.
We all know that conference calls are a great way collaborate and get things done. In his recent podcast, Moden Manners Guy, Richie Frieman, offers some excellent tips worthy of sharing with your team before their next conference call in his recent podcast.
Tips for Conference Call Etiquette
Daytime Answering Service lowers costs.
After being in health care administration for the last seventeen years, I find myself asking the same questions health care executives ask themselves every day. For instance, How can I keep my staff from being overwhelmed by phone calls during office hours?
A daytime answering service helped me in my health care career and made both my livelihood and the quality of care I was able to offer better. Here is how I finally found a call center with the “go to” daytime service my staff and patients need.
One big issue is the amount of calls coming into the front office. Staff members in that area often become switchboard operators instead of handling their other responsibilities during business hours – such as making appointments, checking patients in and out, making sure each patient has an EMR update, verifying insurance, and collecting co-pays and past due balances. I have seen similar issues in the nursing stations because physicians like their nurses by their side and want them available as soon as they come out of an exam room.
From an executive standpoint, we like to keep our physicians constantly busy and ensure that the patient flow is consistent. Physicians don’t want the nursing staff to leave until every voice mail is answered and every patient, pharmacy, home health, hospice call is returned. We know that this becomes an issue of money. At monthly board meetings physicians continually ask their administrators, “Why are we paying out so much in payroll, with majority of it being in overtime?”
These are just a few of the examples in my health care tenure where I have searched for answers, and I have found them in the daytime answering service. This has helped me with staff productivity, patient staff and physician relationships, cost savings of not having to hire additional staff members, and more money to budget for other things needed in the practice.
Daytime Answering Service Perks:
Brian Woods is an ACMPE Physician Advocate at Ambs Call Center. Ambs Call Center provides daytime answering services nationwide for a wide range of industries. Learn more about how daytime answering lowers costs other services at www.AmbsCallCenter.com. Courtesy of Medical Call Center News November,2012.
We are thrilled to announce that Ambs Call Center, has achieved the prestigious Award of Excellence for outstanding call center and quality answering service by the Canadian Call Management Association (CAM-X) during their National conference in Victoria, British Columbia.
The Award of Excellence is a six month long “mystery caller” quality assurance program which is designed to independently judge random calls placed into our call center against pre-defined criteria.
Here at Ambs Call Center we are dedicated to our callers and staff and recognize that excellence is not an act, but a habit. We are committed to giving the caller the best possible experience each and every time they contact our clients, ensuring that our agents have the necessary tools and coaching available to them in order to achieve the greatness that our clients and callers deserve.
While we’re excited to add the 2012 Award of Excellence to our line up, the people who really benefit are our clients and their callers. Our clients can rest assured and boast that that their callers will be greeted by award winning telephone answering service call center agents and the quality assurance standards they have come to expect from Ambs Call Center year after year.
If your business could benefit from a team of people who are focused on your success contact us today.
Secure Messaging v1.5 released!
We’ve added some nice retina graphic updates. We’ve also baked in some other great features that we think all smartphone users will enjoy.
Features of Ambs Call Center’s Secure Messaging App
Socket Layer (SSL) Technology
Ambs Call Center’s Secure Messaging application utilizes 256-bit encryption SSL technology- the same technology that protects sensitive information on major websites that offer secure online transactions. An SSL Certificate enables encryption of sensitive information during transmission-the SSL Certificate being a unique credential generated by a Certificate Authority (CA), which authenticates the identity of the Certificate Owner.
Links to download our secure messaging app: Android | Apple iOS | Blackberry
Ambs Call Center is excited to announce the release of version3.1 of the myAmbs client web portal for its call center and telephone answering service customers. We’ve added several new features and made improvements based on user feedback. The result is a more polished and engaging user experience. We hope you like the results and appreciate the feedback from our clients that helped make this the best version yet!
Web On-Call improvements
Messages and Call Records
View Contact Information and preferences
Database Manager improvements
Time Activated Alerts
If you are interested in using the myAmbs web portal or have questions about the new features, please contact our customer service team and they will be happy to assist.
“Please”, “Thank You”, “May I” and “You’re Welcome”…. These are all very familiar terms of speech to all of us, yet they
are words that we seem to hear less and less. As I sat at a restaurant last week, I observed people not holding doors for others, customers demanding things of the wait staff by saying “I want” and “I need”, and people not pushing their chairs in when leaving their table. I was astounded at the lack of basic manners and courtesy and the more I paid attention to it, the more I noticed it.
When the waitress came to our table, she seemed almost taken aback when my husband and I ordered by saying “May I please have…”, when we thanked her every time she helped us, and how respectful we were. When she dropped off our bill, she commented on how friendly and polite we had been and how she wished that all of her customers were that way. My question is, why aren’t they? When did manners and basic courtesy get cast aside? Don’t we all deserve to be treated with kindness and respect? Yes we do.
In our personal lives, as well as our professional lives, basic courtesy and manners will get you far. In today’s fast paced world it seems like people don’t feel like they have time to be polite to others and that is far from true. With more and more business being conducted over the phone, and through nonverbal forms of communication such as emails and instant messaging, it is more important than ever to always be courteous and use your manners. The person on the receiving end of your email or IM cannot see your face, hear your tone of voice, or read your body language. Something that you have written quickly, because you were in a rush may come off as rude and curt if you omit important things such as a basic salutation and introduction. No one wants to do business with a person who can’t even be bothered with the simple niceties.
In my position as Quality Assurance, I stress the use of manners, the importance of a friendly tone and helpful attitude to our call center agents. These are some of the areas that are critical to being a great call center. Being as that we are the face/voice of many of the clients we answer for, we never get a second chance to make a first impression for our client’s customer. If we come across as rude, disinterested, or too busy to focus on the caller, we have potentially just lost business for our client. That is why I instill the importance of basic manners and courtesy to the call center agents. Just as the waitress in the restaurant was amazed at how polite and courteous my husband and I were, I want all of our callers to feel the same. I want them to hang up having had a genuinely great experience and a positive impression of the company that they just contacted.
Manners and respect can go a long way. We’ve all had to deal with rude and demanding people in our lives. There is no better way to deal with them than with respect and politeness. The old saying “Kill them with kindness” still rings true. Refer to the person by name, be sincere, and treat them how you would like to be treated, even in the toughest of situations. Being courteous and using proper manners not only shows respect for others, it shows respect for yourself.
Jennifer McGlothlin proactively monitors and reviews customer interactions for Ambs Call Center‘s client services team.
As a professional marketing firm and living in the age of Internet marketing and the web world being open 24 hours a day, we routinely are asked, “How can I make a better impression with our prospects and clients? How can I increase return-on-investment? How do I increase qualified leads and sales?” All of those things are important when moving your business forward and are very measurable.
You would probably not put utilizing a call center at the top of that list. Well I am here to tell you it should be right there and here is why:
How many times have you left a voicemail and it has not been returned, especially if that message is left after 5pm? Do you avoid calling “outside of business hours” because you will be in a number menus and auto attendants? How would you like a difference maker when it comes increasing your leads and sales? You could utilize this to support lead efforts and customers in other time zones so you can get more out of your Internet marketing and website and not have to pay salaries to support them. There are even ways to track back calls from specific marketing efforts (like pay-per-click) and know specifically sales from them those called you and didn’t just fill out the web form.
You only have one chance to make a first impression and when that comes with a LIVE person (who is not speaking with a foreign accent as AMBS provides) it makes all the difference in the world. This is especially true when it comes after 5pm local time – they are truly impressed.
A stat you probably did not know – over 50% of people will not call another person if they talk to a live person when shopping for professional services and they have a “positive” experience with that call? So just by using this service, you could eliminate half your “competition” before you talk to them and if deemed important enough based on criteria you set with AMBS, they can reach out to your team immediately and expedite the response to this customer or prospect before the next business day.
We have referred several Bevelwise clients over to AMBS for this support and they are all still with them today. If it didn’t work, they wouldn’t keep doing it because we would have told them to stop. With plans starting at just a few dollars per day, you can’t afford not to try this for your business – it will make a difference.
Jim Barry, Chief Marketer for Bevelwise, and Schedule Utopia creator is a guest contributor to Ambs Call Center’s blog.
As I was not speeding along I-40 on a recent client visit near Fayetteville, AR, I had the pleasure of meeting an Arkansas Highway Patrolman. It was dark outside, and those flashing lights got my attention right away. During this pit stop, I knew I wasn’t going over the speed limit. My lights were on. I thought I was doing everything right.
As he was shining his flashlight over my passenger seat contents, inspecting my empty water bottles and banana peels, reviewing my out-of-state license and car rental agreement and listening to my very rapid, respectful relay of the day’s events, he shared with a big smile that I had changed lanes too quickly and he was checking things out. You’ll be glad to know I ‘checked out’ and I thanked him for his kind and generous assistance (aka warning).
The Value-based purchasing (VBP) siren has sounded
For those of us in the hospital setting, there are no more warnings – it’s officially here. The Hospital Consumer Assessment of Healthcare Providers and Systems (HCAHPS) formal public reporting initiative asks your patients to rate their experiences with respect to various health care delivery systems. These ratings are shared with the public and can potentially affect your hospital’s reputation and standing in the community it serves, and will be used in calculating value-based purchasing payments going forward.
Improving performance on HCAHPS and core measures is a top priority for many organizations now that the VBP performance period has commenced. A portion of every hospital’s baseline Medicare DRG payment will be withheld for use as incentive payments—beginning with 1% in FFY2013 and increasing to 2% in FFY2017. The initial baseline measurement period for all hospitals was July 1, 2009 to March 31, 2010. The performance period where hospitals are scored based on how well they perform on the clinical process of care and patient experience measures began with July 1, 2011, discharges.
Spotlight on Physicians
If you’re looking for an incremental way to improve the likelihood of keeping your full reimbursement under Medicare, you may be interested to know that high levels of physician engagement within the hospital correlate with better HCAHPS and core measures performance.
If physicians have a positive attitude about the hospital, trust hospital leadership and are passionate about the organization’s future, they are more likely to deliver better patient care. For example, at Press Ganey, we know hospitals in the top decile of our Physician Partner database have HCAHPS and core measures scores that are dramatically higher than those clients in the bottom decile. If your organization is looking to improve VBP performance, you may want to consider investing time and resources to improve physician engagement. Focusing on engagement also aids in improving physician communication with patients, a question included on the Inpatient HCAHPS survey.
One Physician’s Golden Rules
If you are looking to review physician engagement and communication; read on. Dr. Barry Wagner, CEO at Cumberland Medical Center in Crossville, TN, recently shared his core beliefs – Wagner’s Golden Rules for Practicing Medicine – with me. He drafted them over ten years ago to share with aspiring practitioners –visionary given where we are today with VBP and HCAHPS.
When he relayed them to me, I was moved by his passion and conviction and believe you will be too:
1) Never take credit for saving someone’s life, because if you do, you must also accept responsibility whenever you lose a patient. I look at myself as a vehicle for delivering care. Ultimately, the patient’s outcome is dependent not only upon my care, but his or her attitude as well as divine intervention.
2) Treat each patient as you would want yourself or a family member to be treated in a similar situation. In other words, practice the Golden Rule of Medicine.
3) Care and compassion are as important as a correct diagnosis. I have handled many complaints and problem situations in which the correct diagnosis was rendered, but the patient perceived the physician as non-caring or exhibiting a lack of compassion.
4) Keep your learning curve on a steep slope. Be a perpetual student. Keep a childlike curiosity about medicine and maintain an ongoing program of study. In other words, be a better practitioner tomorrow than you were today, but not as good as you will be in the future. Learn from all mistakes and try to minimize the chance of repeating them.
Dr. Wagner went on to say that these four simple rules are invaluable for any physician or other healthcare provider. He says, “If we practice these four rules with every patient we see, they will perceive each of us as being a compassionate and caring physician who is on the cutting edge of the art and science of our specialty.”
Inspect what you expect
As you round through your hospital units; listen, observe, and take note of the right behaviors for all involved and build upon them for improved and sustained performance. That way, when someone pulls you over to the side for a quick feedback moment, it will be to recognize your successful outcomes.
Tina Minnick, Client Relationship Manager, for Press Ganey Associates, Inc. is a guest contributor to Ambs Call Center’s healthcare blog.
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