In addition to offshore companies, work-from-home call center operators are beginning to grow in popularity. Companies like Amazon, Dell, Hilton, and Humana are only a few of the biggest companies planning or already using remote, from-home call operators. Though it may appear to be a more quality substitution compared to sending your practices’ calls offshore, it is not. There are still many risks and drawbacks to hiring home-based agents.

Though there are many benefits to from-home call operators including flexibility for workers, 24/7 support schedule, the scalability for call volumes, and more efficiency which leads to shorter hold times, they do not outweigh the drawbacks. These drawbacks include a lack of management, focus, and information security.

Lack of Management

It is impossible to guarantee quality service when you yourself cannot evaluate the employees or workplace of those you are sending your calls to. This goes the same for managers of the from-home operators. In cases like these, one manager cannot focus on more than one member of a scattered workforce. There are many from-home operators who are working unsupervised. The uncertainty of service is a serious risk for your practice. You do not know the operators level of training, quality of treatment, or dedication to the job. It is a well-known fact that call center operators are paid little more than minimum wage. So these workers may not consider it worth the effort to care about the job especially when you add in the emotional stress and labor and inconvenient hours. You do not know what is going to happen when your patients call your practice through the call center. You can only hope for the best.

Lack of focus

Working in ones home can be comforting, but there are many distractions that pop up in the home. This could include noisy pets, crying children, even elderly care. There is a reason these employees are working from home and that reason might be a distraction which could be a risk to your patients and your practice. It is an unpredictable factor that is easily avoidable by simply not using the service.

Lack of Information Security

Brick and mortar call centers, when they do take medical calls, have special precautions in order to keep protected health information secure. However, enforcing those protocols in a home environment is near impossible short of going to the house and surveying the employee constantly. This also results in a lack of HIPAA compliance. An answering service that sends calls to homes cannot ensure the protection of your patients’ information.

Conclusion

In conclusion, sending calls to home-based call operators comes with many risks. These risks include the lack of management, lack of focus, and lack of protection for your patients’ information. The unpredictability of these factors leaves your practice at risk for patient dissatisfaction and mishandling of patient information.

On Call Central, however, eliminates these risks and more. The leading automated answering service will be easy to understand because it is customized by you, knowing everything about your practice and being medically trained. It will forward to the correct number every time because the patient knows the message they want to leave their practice. You will know the quality of the product because you can customize and examine it all yourself, on the web or app interface. With automated documentation on this program, it is 100% HIPAA certified and picks up on the first ring every time. It is a program made for you.

Learn how to achieve the best outcomes and earn the highest patient satisfaction and the many ways On Call Central can help your practice. Get a free demonstration led by one of our helpful On Call Central team members and/or free quote to see how the leading fully automated medical answering service can work for your practice.