When you hear artificial intelligence, you often think of the killer robots from the Terminator® universe, but AI is such a big part of daily life now. Microsoft, banking technology, Google, social media networks, smart watches, step and sleep trackers, and even smart toasters all use artificial intelligence in the background, to make their products and services more useful to you. We have come a long way from Skynet and killer robot fantasy; artificial intelligence helps us with every day life.

But, how can artificial intelligence help healthcare providers?

Aside from the obvious applications of AI tech in healthcare, like tracking trends and anomalies in vast amounts of anonymised patient data such as the median demographics for hypertension or type 2 diabetes, artificial intelligence can massively impact communication. Each year, we see news reports of the NHS being more under strain than the previous year, and doctors’ waiting rooms are consistently full of ill patients waiting to see a doctor, with appointments sometimes being fully booked for two to three weeks in advance. This creates an added strain on administrative staff, who need to balance incoming phone calls, walk-in patients, prescription collections, appointment bookings and other internal administrative tasks. When you add all of that up, plus the exposure to contagious viral illnesses on a daily basis, administrative healthcare staff are perpetually under strain.

But what if we told you there was a way to alleviate some of that strain? What if there was a way to potentially reduce the volume of phone calls and walk-in’s, and increase the number of appointments booked, all while reducing the telephone queue and the exposure to viral illnesses, like the flu or cold? Doesn’t that sound magical? Click4Assistance’s live chat software can supplement your healthcare business to make it stronger, more efficient and increase its customer satisfaction rates.

Here is how works: live chat software on your website allows your administrative staff to chat with three or more patients at a time, so they can make more appointment bookings quite easily, and eliminate the risk of getting ill from those patients, so potentially less sick days. Because you can skip the telephone queue and chat with someone online, patients would be more likely to use this method, reducing the volume of phone calls and the waiting queue.

With a higher volume of people now using your live chat software, you would want to start looking at ways to maximise that efficiency. Enter, artificial intelligence. Some questions can be answered by a virtual assistant chatbot, like Click4Assistance’s Artie. This in turn reduces the number of website visitors your administrative staff manage on a daily basis. If you want to assign certain members of staff to deal with appointments or prescription queries only, or even certain doctors, this would be massively beneficial if you could filter those to a specific person who is responsible.

The big benefits of an AI chatbot are that it does not sleep, does not get ill, does not need to take annual leave and can chat with an unlimited number of website visitors simultaneously. Artie can also immediately engage your patients so that your staff don’t have to. This instantly increases your customer service satisfaction rate and improves the quality of your overall service. By asking simple questions and collecting vital information that your administrative staff will need, an AI chatbot can speed up the process once the chat has been transferred to a team member. Artie’s questions can also filter conversations to the right person, and once the chat has been transferred to your admin team, they will be able to pull the patient’s details and assist them quicker than having to wait for the information themselves; thus increasing efficiency and productivity.

In the long run, using live chat software paired with an AI chatbot saves both time and money. As it reduces the time required for patient communication, your staff will have more time to accommodate other administrative tasks, so you should not feel pressured to increase your team’s size to increase productivity as the software is already doing this for you. Reports will show you how your patients are communicating with you and how long on average your team members are spending with each chat. This will also help you to determine where you can maximise time. For instance, if a team member is spending too long on each chat, your administrative manager can ask them if they are struggling with assisting patients or if they require further customer service training, which will improve the overall service of your healthcare practice.

As healthcare providers, you have to maximise your administrative team’s time and productivity. Live chat with an artificial intelligence chatbot from Click4Assistance can assist with that in a big way. If you’re interested in deploying Click4Assistance, the UK’s premier GDPR compliant live chat software solution, to digitally transform your health practice, give us a call on 08451235871 or send an email theteam@click4assistance.co.uk and one of our team experts will be with you right away.