[2024 eBook] The Six Strategic Advantages of Consolidated Contact Centers 

The American Hospital Association reports that half of the 6,120 hospitals in the United States belong to merged healthcare systems. This mergers and acquisition activity plays a critical role in improving their services. However, it also creates more complex needs that are often fulfilled by separate systems across different buildings and campuses.  

Read this eBook to find out: 

1. Why consolidating contact centers matters  

Contact centers are the first point of contact for patients, setting the tone for the perception of your health care organization. In other words, your employees are vital ambassadors for representing your brand. Poorly managed calls can quickly overshadow a carefully cultivated reputation. Consolidating contact centers ensures that you’re maintaining these excellent standards by bringing together your best resources and talent.  

2. The benefits of contact center consolidation 

Consolidated contact centers have notable benefits. This unified infrastructure allows employees to quickly access the information they need to handle calls with a few keystrokes, enhancing their ability to handle greater call volumes and increasing overall productivity. By reducing their workloads, your agents can experience increased satisfaction with their work too.  

Another strategic advantage of consolidating contact centers is shortening response times to critical codes. Every second counts in a medical emergency, and this single function efficiently connects a health organization’s internal departments to various sites. A centralized directory also means cleaner data so your hospital can continuously make improvements.  

In addition, contact center consolidation enables your employees to handle more diverse tasks and responses. They’re expected to go beyond answering and transferring phone calls, requiring a unified infrastructure to handle requests such as appointment scheduling, event registration, and physician-to-physician referrals.  

3. How to evaluate the ROI of consolidating contact centers  

Understanding the benefits of consolidated contact centers begins by collecting pre-consolidation data. Your health organization would then determine metrics, such as the number of full-time agents, hold times, and length of calls, that align most closely with your idea of success. The next step is to track these improvements over time compared to your original baseline.  

Measuring the ROI for contact center consolidation might appear daunting at first, but real-life success stories from leading organizations can offer helpful guidance with this process.  

What’s next for healthcare organizations:  

Customer-centric expectations are creating more demand for consistent, personalized patient experiences. Taking the steps towards contact center consolidation ensures that your employees can meet these evolving expectations while staying ahead of the ever-changing developments in clinical communication technology.