3 most common inefficiencies for healthcare organizations
As the clinic expanded its clientele, the demand for immediate support became critical. The clinic faced three main pain points:
- Need for Immediate, 24/7 Support: Patients often sought assistance outside regular business hours. Bilal explained, “About 50% of the inquiries overall that were coming in were coming in outside of business hours… A lot of people were coming in either super early morning on weekends or super late at night. And those are people who would have not been serviced otherwise, right? Because nobody’s picking up the phone.”
- Inefficiencies in Appointment Booking: The traditional appointment booking process was limited by staff availability. If all the receptionists are busy, then “nobody’s allowing them to… get into the pipeline to book appointments.” These inefficiencies create missed opportunities for patient care and revenue.
- Difficulty in Managing Reviews and Feedback: Handling both positive and negative reviews can be challenging for clinics. Happy patients often forget to post reviews, whereas angry patients tend to leave long reviews. This disparity can hurt the clinic’s discoverability and online reputation. “If you have good reviews, you want to highlight them. If you have negative reviews, you want to be able to deal with them internally,” Bilal emphasized.
How an AI-Powered Chatbot Transformed Patient Support
To address these pain points, Helpline Hero implemented an AI-powered chatbot using Voiceflow. The custom agent streamlined the clinic’s customer support and delivered revenue and CSAT results.
24/7 Support and Revenue Growth
The AI agent allowed the clinic to convert inquiries into appointments and revenue around the clock. This constant availability meant that potential patients could receive immediate answers to their questions, such as, “Can PRP [Platelet Rich Plasma Treatment] help me?” and could be booked in immediately to “strike while the iron is hot.” As a result, the clinic experienced an additional $50,000 in monthly revenue, which was directly attributed to the chatbot’s ability to handle inquiries and facilitate bookings.
Accurate Answers Powered By a Knowledge Base
Bilal used Voiceflow to incorporate a comprehensive knowledge base that draws frequently asked questions from the clinic’s website and internal documentation, enabling the chatbot to answer patients’ questions accurately. For instance, when a patient asks, “I tore my MCL, can you help me?” the AI agent can respond immediately. Thanks to its contextual awareness and the use of Retrieval-Augmented Generation (RAG), the chatbot retrieves relevant information swiftly and accurately, ensuring that patients receive timely and precise responses to their inquiries.
More Patient Feedback and Positive Reviews
A standout feature that Bilal developed for the AI chatbot is its ability to encourage patients to leave reviews on Google, which in turn enhances the clinic’s online reputation and boosts website traffic.
Firstly, Bilal implemented a systematic approach to solicit feedback from patients regarding their experiences. He noted, “If they rated it as one, two, three, or four stars, we would handle that feedback internally. But if it was five stars, we encouraged them to leave a public review.”
Secondly, for those patients who reported positive experiences, the chatbot would prompt them to provide specific feedback. Bilal explained, “We actually use AI to generate the review for them. We ask for their name and one positive thing about their experience. The AI takes that information and creates a review.”
Finally, the AI chatbot confirms with the patient, asking if the generated review looks good. If it does, they can simply click “yes,” which directs them straight to the Google review page where they can paste their feedback.
This automated approach to encouraging reviews not only bolsters the clinic’s online reputation but also increases the clinic’s website traffic without incurring additional marketing costs. Bilal shared that when they started, the clinic was receiving about 2,500 website visitors a month, and now they’re seeing “4,500 to 5,000 a month,” with the increases “coming 100% from this chatbot.”
How Does the Healthcare AI Agent Protect Patient Privacy?
One of the primary concerns when implementing AI solutions in healthcare is patient privacy. Bilal addressed these concerns by ensuring that the AI agent would not collect or store any personal information from patients. He emphasized, “We’re answering general questions using information that is already available on your website. We’re not storing any patient data.”
This commitment to privacy was crucial, especially given the stringent regulations surrounding patient data. By directing inquiries back to the website, where patients could find the necessary referral forms, Bilal streamlined the process while maintaining confidentiality. He explained, “This clinic doesn’t allow you to just book in directly; you need to get a referral.” This approach not only eased the administrative burden on staff but also established a secure framework for patient interactions, allowing them to engage confidently with the AI agent without fear of compromising their privacy.
Why Bilal Needed to Switch From Botpress to Voiceflow
Bilal initially explored various AI chatbot providers, including Botpress. However, he encountered complexities that made the process cumbersome, stating, “They required you to interact with some other middleware, and it was complicated.” After testing Voiceflow’s build experience and developer tooling, he decided to make the switch.
Impressed by the developer flexibility that Voiceflow offered, Bilal recognized its support for both no-code and advanced integrations. He remarked, “Voiceflow makes it easy. I can send an API request to a webhook and then take care of it. Sometimes the clients are using Zapier, sometimes they’re using Make, sometimes they have their own APIs. You can interface with all of that directly. So that’s a really big plus.” This clarity led him to conclude, “All right, I think Voiceflow is the better platform.”
Bilal summarized his experience using Voiceflow: “It’s a platform where you can easily build custom AI experiences with conversational agents.” This combination of user-friendliness and powerful developer features made Voiceflow the ideal choice for Bilal as he sought to enhance his AI agency’s capabilities.
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