Help Scout for Healthcare
Medical offices and other healthcare practices have a lot of moving parts. Appointments, test results, treatment services, inquiries about overall care, a lot of incoming messages are received daily. Office staff might only be knowledgeable about specific administrative needs, yet still be responsible for all facets of the business.
When managing incoming communication via an email tool like Outlook, there is zero visibility into what is happening overall within the practice. This also keeps information siloed away from everyone, and could leave certain knowledge with one person. If that person is away from the office or unavailable, the knowledge has left with them, making helping patients or clients in a timely manner impossible.
A Shared Inbox
By using a shared inbox within the office, everyone can have access to all of the information they need at any time. If you have an email address such as help@, billing@ or office@, anything sent to that address is what would come into a shared inbox. Previous emails from patients can be seen with ease, and any information someone was needing could easily be searched for.
A shared inbox also allows you to see where any of your teammates are working at any given time, no more forwarding emails from one Outlook inbox to another, or not knowing who is answering what email, everyone can work from the same inbox at the same time and have full visibility.
With Help Scout, you can also have separate inboxes for things like patient care, billing, office scheduling, different locations, etc. This allows you to easily keep all relevant emails together, instead of forwarding different things around from individual Outlook inboxes. You can also have productivity tools like saved replies, which are helpful for procedural answers which could make up a bulk of the work. Instead of typing out the same response to frequently asked questions, you can respond to an email in just a few clicks.
A FAQ Site
Your company might receive questions through email that do not need a reply, that patients could find the answer themselves. Office hours, how to file insurance claims, what to expect for certain types appointments or treatments can all be answered by setting up a knowledge base. With this, patients can help themselves find answers, even when your office is not open. This also frees up time for your team to answer more complicated emails that do need a human response.
Setting up a knowledge base also allows you to put AI to work for you. AI within Help Scout will learn not only from the email replies that you send, but also from any knowledge base articles you write. That will allow you to not only work more efficiently, but allow your patients to get the help they need in the way that they prefer.
You can also set up internal knowledge articles, that only members of your team have access to. That would allow you to store reference information for your team to easily access, but is not visible to anyone else publicly.
Help From Your Website
Adding a small widget on the website for your practice can allow you to give options to your patients when they are looking for help. In Help Scout we call this widget Beacon, and it can be added to any webpage or site that you have access to.
At it’s core, Beacon is a simple contact form. When on your website, patients or clients will be able to contact you via email without having to remember your email address. They can visit your website, open the Beacon, and email you directly from there.
If you set up a knowledge base within Help Scout, that information will also be available for anyone to search from your website via Beacon. Someone could visit your website, open the Beacon, search for the help they need, and find it without having to contact your office. This saves your team time to do more complicated work, and allows your patient or client to help themselves in the way that is best for them.
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