Remote Receptionists vs. Virtual Receptionists: What’s The Difference?

The popular notion of virtual receptionists is that they’re limited to specific functions like answering phone calls or responding to emails. On the contrary, with a remote front desk platform like WelcomeWare, virtual receptionists can perform all front desk responsibilities remotely.

Virtual receptionists can:

• Greet and check in patients. When patients interact with the kiosk, your receptionist can greet them with a smile and check them in for their booking, maintaining the human touch.
• Verify insurance eligibility. Remote receptionists can process your patients’ insurance information at the point of service.
• Collect co-pays. They can also ensure that copayments and coinsurance are collected during the patient’s visit.
• Coordinate care plans. With sufficient training, your receptionists can coordinate the patient’s care plan to ensure a smooth clinical workflow.

Covering Multiple Locations Simultaneously

Typically, a receptionist can only cover one front desk at a time, which often comes with the risk of a disproportionate workload amongst receptionists across your practice.

For instance, a large clinic with a high patient volume will keep its receptionists busy accommodating multiple patients. On the other hand, in a smaller clinic with the same practice and experiencing a low patient volume, receptionists will have a significantly larger bandwidth.

Empowering your receptionists with remote flexibility allows them to cover multiple locations simultaneously. Besides ensuring continuous front desk coverage across your entire practice, this maximizes your receptionists’ ROI, ensuring they always have a manageable workload without falling into burnout.

Always Available Front Desk Coverage And Increased Revenue

Sudden absences can leave you scrambling to cover the front desk, as otherwise, your patients will be left unaccommodated when they enter the clinic, leading to lower patient satisfaction.

A single team of remote receptionists can not only cover multiple locations — they can also cover each other should a receptionist become unavailable.

This maintains patient satisfaction and boosts revenue as well via the following:

• Increased schedule-outs – An empty front desk may lead to patients leaving without booking another appointment. Remote receptionists can schedule appointments consistently with their increased availability.
• Higher co-pay collections – Virtual receptionists facilitate the collection process at the point of service to protect your practice’s revenue cycle.
• Upselling opportunities – Having an always-available front desk also ensures receptionists can promote other services or offerings to your patients.

Cost Reduction

It takes 3-6 months to hire a receptionist. However, the average tenure of a receptionist lasts 6-12 months. This leads to significant expenses not only in searching for talent but also in incurring potential losses due to having an unsatisfactory patient experience.

Offering work-from-home flexibility to your receptionists significantly increases staff satisfaction and retention while minimizing the tedious, constant hiring and training process.

Additionally, improved staff retention and multiple location coverage enable you to reduce your headcount and reinvest your cost savings into your current staff. This further enhances their capabilities and increases the value they can bring to your practice.

How To Implement A Remote Front Desk In Your Practice

Properly integrating a virtual front desk into your practice may seem challenging at first, but reaping the benefits of remote receptionists is straightforward with the proper steps.

To implement a remote front desk into your practice, you have to do the following:

• Reach out to a live virtual receptionist service and platform provider. WelcomeWare, for example, provides an all-in-one software and hardware solution that provides virtual receptionist kiosks with dedicated software designed specifically to enable check-in responsibilities and other functions remotely.
• Train your receptionists in your chosen virtual front desk platform. Your team may need some time to adjust to the new setup since front desk work is traditionally in-person. Fortunately, platforms like WelcomeWare are intuitive and easy to learn within a few hours.
• If necessary, hire dedicated virtual assistants to complement your in-house staff. WelcomeWare, for example, offers dedicated virtual assistants called “Welcomers” that can help your in-house staff empower your front desk operations.
• Monitor your front desk performance. Measuring key performance indicators through patient surveys and a reporting dashboard, like WelcomeWare Analytics, allows you to have deeper insights into how your remote receptionist setup is performing for future reference.
• Implement your remote front desk in other locations. Live virtual receptionist services like WelcomeWare can provide the best value when utilized across multiple locations. This enables you to cut costs while making the most out of your current front desk team.

Read this blog to learn more about what you need to look for in a virtual front desk platform!

Choose The Right Virtual Front Desk Reception Platform Provider

Remote receptionists or virtual receptionists — whichever you prefer calling them — can elevate your practice significantly by facilitating a consistent experience where patients are never left hanging at the front desk. As long as you choose the right virtual front desk platform provider to enable remote reception, you’re well on your way to achieving greater success and growing your business in the healthcare space.

Explore WelcomeWare, the leading virtual front desk software and hardware platform for physical therapy practices! Discover how WelcomeWare’s video receptionist platform has enabled numerous organizations to utilize virtual video receptionists to improve the patient experience, streamline operations, and cut costs.

A study on the effect of the socioeconomic status of patients on clinic perceptions found that patients seen as having high socioeconomic status tend to receive preferential access to primary care than patients seen as having low socioeconomic status.

Some patients may find it challenging to keep up with their bills. Nevertheless, your practice must treat each patient with the same empathy and regard. This applies to every aspect of the patient experience, including check-in, care coordination, and appointment scheduling.

When patients feel accommodated regardless of their financial capabilities, they’re significantly more likely to return the favor by paying their responsibilities on time.

Communicate Financial Responsibility For Practice Success

Clarifying your patients’ financial responsibility can substantially improve their satisfaction with your clinic. Regardless of the patient’s socioeconomic status, your practice must support them every step of the way, not only to ensure the security of your revenue cycle but also for the benefit of your patients.

Empower your receptionists with WelcomeWare, a video receptionist platform that enables virtual front desk reception for your clinic. Learn how WelcomeWare’s patient intake solutions can streamline operations, reduce costs, and improve your revenue cycle!