Most medical offices have had the unfortunate experience of dealing with processing through an overwhelming number of voicemails. Managing the information can be challenging. By setting up a more thorough voicemail greeting, you can smartly route your calls, and cut down on voicemail pile up.
We have assisted many companies set up their medical office voicemail over the last 60+ years. Here are 4 easy steps that we recommend for you to follow to set up yours:
1) Create a list of call types coming into your office.
- To best assist your callers and effectively route their calls, you will need to classify your call types.
2) Determine how you want to route your calls.
- This will depend on your budget and office size. If you have a very small staff, then setting up a standard voice mail greeting system will be more practical.
- For a larger organization with multiple departments, it makes more sense to route calls to their intended destinations by using an auto attendant. For example, “If you have a question about billing, press 1. If you’d like to schedule an appointment, press 2. If this is a medical emergency, press 0 for an operator.”
3) Draft a script
- Your voicemail greeting should include basic information like your hours of operation and location.
This will help you to screen out calls during office hours, and also unnecessary voicemail inquiries.
- Instruct the callers what you want them to leave voicemails for, and what you want them to call back for during office hours.
Many callers will be respectful of your wishes, and follow your directives. This is extremely vital to reducing your voicemail volume.
- Ask the caller for multiple pieces of specific information when leaving a voicemail.
By asking for things like full patient name, date of birth, and phone number-you can increase your chances of being able to successfully return a call, even if the message is hard to decipher.
- State your return call policy for voicemail response.
By giving callers an expectation of when they will hear back from someone in your office; you can eliminate multiple phone calls from the caller, and double work for your staff members.
4) Set up your voicemail
- When recording your voicemail adjust your script as needed to sound personable.
- Your voicemail system should be easily customizable.
