An increasing number of savvy small business owners are recognizing that outsourcing their telephone answering services in the form of an off-site receptionist is an excellent way to control costs and enhance customer service without the headaches of hiring an employee. However, before taking this step it is important to assess an accurate value for such a service so you can budget realistically.
Unlike an old-fashioned telephone answering service, a modern-day off-site receptionist (sometimes called a virtual receptionist or remote receptionist), provides a wide range of services including live telephone answering, real-time call connections, appointment scheduling, order placement, seminar registrations and more. In fact, the core philosophy of these companies differ from an answering service in that they consider themselves YOUR employee for that phone call, and not the third-party service associated with after-hours calls to the doctor’s office.
So, what is the true value of an off-site receptionist and how does it compare with hiring a receptionist to work at your location? Here are some estimated costs associated with hiring that employee including some not so obvious ones you will want to consider. According to Salary.com, the median cost of hiring a receptionist is as follows:
Source: HR Reported data as of March 2009
Multi-Site Family Planning and Wellness Centers
Challenge
Family Planning and Wellness Center sought a solution to help the organization to:
- increase patient satisfaction scores.
- improve revenue.
- increase the amount of time nurse leaders devote to patient care.
Administration wanted to find a way to improve customer service by allowing the callers to gain access to appointment schedulers in the least amount of time. Typical hold time averaged between five and seven minutes to get a live operator. When call volume was excessive, callers were given the option to leave a voicemail or hold. As a result, typical voicemail volume per office averaged 70-85 voicemail messages per day, with nurses often having to respond to non-clinical issues.
Patients were not happy with service and supervisory staff was bogged down with taking numerous patient complaints about the wait time to get a call back. In addition to patient complaints, administrators took calls from a number of physicians complaining about not being able to reach clinic staff.
| Benefit | Median Amount | % of Total |
| Base Salary | $33,787 | 67.4% |
| Bonuses | $394 | 0.8% |
| Social Security | $2,615 | 5.2% |
| 401k | $1,231 | 2.5% |
| Disability | $342 | 0.7% |
| Healthcare | $5,722 | 11.4% |
| Pension | 1,572 | 3.1% |
| Time Off | $4,470 | 8.9% |
| Total | $50,132 | 100% |
Solution
The appointment scheduling line re-routed to Call 4 Health for live operator coverage from 7:00 am to 7:00 pm. Through web-based interface, and VPN connection, Call 4 Health remotely accessed the health centers’ EMR system. Established e-mail message delivery of non-urgent messages for each practitioner.
Results
- Improved the average answering speed from average 5 minutes to 36 seconds.
- Increased the availability of operators to handle and triage appointment calls vs non-urgent clinical questions for nurse follow-up.
- The call center scheduled 292 more patient appointments per month than the office staff, with 30% being new patients.
- Increase in appointments produced an additional $37,475 in revenue per month, which is more than 10 times the return on their investment.
- The scheduling department was able to reduce their work force by one FTE, while simultaneously increasing staff productivity by 25%.
- Nurses were able to focus on patient care as they were no longer clearing off high volumes of voicemail messages.
- Patient satisfaction scores, measured through surveys, increased.
