Patient satisfaction — the bread butter of any healthcare organization. It’s elusive, coveted, and seriously necessary. When you know how to improve patient satisfaction, brand loyalty and referrals skyrocket.
A primary tenant of any healthcare organization, especially those intent on scaling, is to satisfy patients. Patient satisfaction is scripture. Coupled with that existing patients are 50% more likely to spend on adjacent and expanded services, it can’t be brushed off. That said, studies confirm that the second most frequent patient complaint centers on communication problems.
Communication problems drive further issues. Access to services, staff attitude, and level of caring impede healthcare organizations’ abilities to satisfy patients.
Patient complaints are often emotional in nature. Unsatisfied patients typically express distress when they aren’t heard, can’t get an answer, or don’t feel cared about. No one wants to feel unimportant.
Many of these types of complaints can be easily avoided from the start by adopting the right HIPAA-compliant SMS communication tools to guide patients through the patient journey.
Improve patient satisfaction – accessibility and communication
| Goal: | Improve patient satisfaction |
| How: | Stay engaged with patients on the platform of their choice |
| Outcome: | Patients who feel satisfied and heard |
Humanize the patient experience
- Follow-up with patients after their visit. Send a quick HIPAA-compliant SMS message. Whether or not it says it directly, you are articulating to the patient: “thank you for coming in, we appreciate you!”
- Guide patients from surgery to post-op, from post-op to follow-up services, via their most preferred channel — SMS. When the patient clicks the “chat with us” link, the chat opens on a dedicated landing page.
- Set up separate Guide Bots based on the page (e.g. the stage in of the patient’s journey). For example — Surgery, Post Op, Physical Therapy, and so on. If the patient is on a post-op-specific page, guide them to physical therapy as their next step. Then use Guide Bots to organically usher patients through the patient journey.
- Fire a dedicated proactive chat message from the dedicated landing page:
- “Hi, thank you for coming in!”
- Give us feedback (closes chat and redirects to a survey).
- Book your next appointment (redirects to the scheduling page or an agent).
Allow patients to engage with you
Use the power of SnapEngage’s omnichannel solution. Purchase an SMS number right from the SnapEngage Admin Dashboard, avoiding the need to add any additional software.
- BONUS: Want to use your own landline number? Contact us!
Advertise the SMS number and a “chat with us” link in: post-service emails, post-service pages, post-payment pages, reminder emails, newsletters, and at the office.
- Best practice would be to include verbiage similar to: “save this number in your contacts, and text us anytime, on the go.”
- Incoming chats from SMS will come into the SnapEngage Hub. The same goes for chats from your website or Facebook Messenger. Your agents can work with precision, and all from one platform.
- Incoming chats from the SMS number are easily identifiable.
Tools for patient satisfaction success
| HIPAA SMS: Use HIPAA-compliant SMS-to-Chat feature to reach patients in their preferred communication mode. |
| Guide Bot: Configure a guide bot that shows up in proactive chat. |
Improve patient satisfaction – make it a core tenant
Satisfy and keep your current clients so you will secure the foundation for scalability, free up staff for better efficiency, and act will precognition against the most common patient complaints.
Find out how easy it is to add HIPAA-compliant SMS to your patient communications platforms and enhance patient engagement to assure top-tier patient satisfaction.
