How retail and e-commerce brands can take a cue from healthcare customer service

Unlock new potential in your contact center by implementing these healthcare customer service secrets.

In the healthcare industry, contact centers are generally more established and mature with efficient routing, tried and true metrics, and continuous quality improvement. Early stage or B2C companies in the retail, ecommerce, regional utility, and non-profit sectors can learn and apply valuable lessons to their (perhaps) less-complex support operations. Granted, the healthcare industry as a whole has a long way to go in leveraging data to eliminate friction and elevate the customer-patient experience, but recent changes to the trajectory of the industry as a whole can inform more nimble contact centers how to offer best-in-class customer interactions.

The notion of the “longitudinal health (or human) record” is one on which even the US government has provided input and guidance to the healthcare industry in efforts to drive improved health outcomes. The basic idea is that all medical providers have access to your single, master copy, digital patient record so as to coordinate, de-duplicate, and improve care delivery. As you consider how to deliver a fast, frictionless experience in your B2C contact center, consider how looking at your customers through the lens of a longitudinal engagement record can inform your contact center priorities:

• Know Me - Customers expect you - to a reasonable degree - to know who they are and their history with your brand. What are the vitals or key data points your agents need to know about your customers? Contacto’s integrations with industry-standard CRMs and OMSs offers your agents a seamless view into previous customer interactions with the Customer Data and Customer History panels.
• Help Me - Customers want to be delighted. Contacto eliminates the “swivel chair” system hopping and operational redundancies by empowering your agents with data, context, and line of sight via a single-pane-of-glass workbench so they can go the extra mile with proactive, human-centric service. Kinda like NOT being handed a clipboard at the doctor’s office. One can dream!
• Keep Me - Customers will come back. If you’ve treated them with dignity and eliminated friction — armed with context, your most valuable asset — transactional and relational scores will be primary symptoms to the underlying dividends yielded in customer loyalty and lifetime value.