I started working in a call center for a very large hospital, scheduling appointments for patients in our specialty clinics. Our manager has no life whatsoever and I think she sits at home thinking of ways to annoy the agents here.
First, when a patient calls, we give our greeting and then listen to the callers request. We are REQUIRED to say, “Ok, I can help you with that”. Often times, after listening to the patients request, I’m not even sure if I CAN help the patient without doing some more research.
Another thing that we’re required to do on each call is verify the patients name, address, PCP, insurance (policy numbers included) and emergency contacts…and some of these patients have 3 phone numbers, and 2 or 3 emergency contacts! A lot of the patients are frequent callers and have to verify this information every single time they call (unless they refuse). But the clencher is…if someone calls just to ask a simple question, we are still supposed to get their name and DOB, then verify this information. It just seems like a useless waste of time. I’ve been told off so many times by patients who are sick of repeating this information over and over. I think it would be much easier if we could just say, “have their been any changes to your address, phone number or insurance since your last visit?”. I suggested this during our last meeting and was told by the manager that it is her goal to make sure that the mail department does not get any returned mail and we must verify this on each call…EACH call no matter what. So, if a pharmacy calls with a question about a prescription, we are supposed to ask the pharmacy employee to verify the patients information, and most of the time, it does not match what we have. So, we assume that what we have is wrong and put in the contact info that the pharmacy has. It just seems counter-productive to me.
Oh, and when a patient calls to schedule an appointment, we are never to say the words “next available” as in “my next available appointment is…”. She says it is not a customer friendly phrase.
And then, at the conclusion of the call, we are to ask, “is there anything else I can help you with?”. Apparently, the patients hear it as “can you repeat everything you just said to me about why you were calling?”
To make matters worse, my immediate supervisor is a micro-manager. She nit-picks on the silliest things, like once when she was monitoring a call, I told a patient that her appointment was at 2 o’clock. Supervisor was monitoring me and she said that I should have said “2 PM”. Duh, how many clinics are open at 2 AM? If the patient showed up at 2 AM for an appointment, they need more help than what we can provide. There was another time when a patient called to cancel an appointment. She said that her husband died, to which I said, “aww, I’m sorry to hear that”. Well, supervisor was monitoring me yet again and said that I didn’t sound sincere!! WTF? These were not write-ups or anything, just “observations” that she made.
My department is set up into several teams, and my team is the only team that has this no-life supervisor. When I first started, several co-workers asked me what team I was on and when I told them, they said, “Ooooh, sorry about that”.
And we can’t wear jeans or casual clothes. Shirt and tie for the male employees. We’re in a freaking call center!! Who’s gonna see us, except for our co-workers?
Only a few more months until I can transfer to another department. I dread coming to this place every morning, but I am glad to have a decent paying job I guess.
Ok, I feel better for getting this off my chest. 