With the overwhelming amount of robocalls, it’s been difficult for some healthcare organizations such as hospitals, pharmacies, doctors’ offices and insurance groups to deliver critical updates on care, prescriptions, appointments, coverage and billing. At the same time, the inability to reach patients to confirm everyday appointments can impact the time investment required by staffers and the bottom line. Thirty percent of patients may not show up for their appointments, and according to a study published by Health Management Technology, patient no-shows cost the US healthcare system more than $1.5 billion each year. That translates into 60 minutes of lost time and $200 lost revenue per vacant slot.
Enter TNS Enterprise Branded Calling. The latest offering in our broader Robocall Detection and Protection Suite of products, helps to improve patient engagement rates for healthcare entities’ by making the voice channel an integral part of any Customer Experience (CX) program. This helps healthcare organizations more effectively and efficiently reach patients and consumers with time-sensitive health information and confirm appointments.
How it Works
TNS Enterprise Branded Calling delivers a business’ call information on an incoming call screen to better educate customers on who is calling them. The additional information helps to prompt increased engagement rates (answer rate) between businesses and their customers.
TNS has found significant consumer demand for branded call solutions. When healthcare organizations provide more brand information, customers are more likely to trust the incoming call and answer the phone. In fact, according to a TNS survey, 79% of consumers would answer a branded call from their healthcare provider if the brand logo/name was displayed on the incoming call screen.
With a history of delivering branded calling solutions, the company has delivered more than 1 billion calls across US wireless carrier networks over the last decade.
Benefits for Healthcare Businesses
Enterprise Branded Calling offers healthcare organizations three primary benefits to help improve their business operations. The first is an improved lead-generation process. Any failure to reach and engage consumers via voice calls can represent a breakdown in the lead generation process. Enterprise Branded Calling can help to rebuild trust in voice calls so organizations can drive new customer acquisition.
The second benefit is helping to increase call agent productivity. This is achieved by enabling agents to reach individuals faster by presenting critical information to identify who is calling. Not only does this solution help healthcare organizations deliver personal information to their customers more quickly, but it also helps call agents make more calls throughout the business day.
Finally, branded calling helps businesses provide a superior customer experience. By delivering critical information on incoming call screens, branded calling enables enterprises to deliver time-sensitive information more effectively and efficiently to their customers.
TNS Enterprise Branded Calling has already demonstrated its value across numerous markets, like healthcare where the ability to reach consumers quickly with highly valuable personal information is so important. Our survey found that 60% of Americans will answer a branded call from a doctor’s office/healthcare services provider. Equally vital is that 56% prefer to engage with their healthcare provider via phone calls rather than any other communication method. In other words, when trust in voice calling falls, it can have a damaging ripple effect on healthcare consumers.
Real World Impact
Early trials of TNS Enterprise Branded Calling have demonstrated the positive impact the technology has in connecting healthcare organizations with their customers. For example, one nationwide healthcare provider came to TNS looking for help to engage their customer base. This company’s business model relies on making calls to patients to better understand their care needs in order to mitigate the risk of serious diseases and unnecessary hospital admissions. Since equipping outbound calls with TNS Enterprise Branded Calling, the healthcare organization’s customer engagement rate increased by 41%.
Branded calling solutions also played a pivotal role throughout the COVID-19 pandemic, when contact tracers were desperate to reach consumers to alert them of test results and close contact to positive cases. Part of TNS’ Branded Calling solution portfolio, TNS Public Safety Branded Calling has delivered over 200 million branded calls to date and received the TMC 2022 Pandemic Tech Innovation Award. More than 2,000 health organizations (hospitals, state health departments and care providers) across 46 states have registered their validated telephone numbers with TNS to reach Americans with critical health information more effectively.
If you’re part of a healthcare organization and want to learn more about TNS Enterprise Branded Calling, visit here.
Jim Tyrrell is Vice President of Enterprise Product Management at TNS with specific responsibility for TNS’ Communications Market solutions.