Medical Answering Services Can Handle Seminar and Class Registration
January 12th, 2017 | 3 min. read
By Peter DeHaan
Healthcare seminars and classes are a great way to communicate instruction tailored to a specific interest niche. This is both an effective and efficient way to disseminate medical-related information.While you can announce a schedule, plan the curriculum, and prepare the space in hopes that someone shows up, this isn’t the most effective approach. What if no one attends? Then you’ve wasted time and resources.
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What if too many people come and the space can’t accommodate them all? Or what if only a handful of attendees arrive and they feel lost in the over-sized room prepared for them. This is important for a class with ongoing attendance, but even more critical for a seminar with only one shot to get things right.
Of course you want to know ahead of time if people plan to attend and how many. To do so you need them to register in advance. Yet that adds another level of complexity you may not have time to deal with. You could use some help, and your medical answering service can provide it.
Let your answering service handle your healthcare seminar and class registrations for you. Here’s what to expect.
Plan Attendance
Indicate that preregistration is required in all of your promotions and postings about the seminar or class. Give them your answering service’s number (they’ll provide one just for you to use) for your attendees to call and register.
Your answering service will professionally answer those calls, answer questions, and collect attendee information. The essential data is the attendee names. Other helpful information might be what they want on their name tag and any title they may have. In some cases demographic profile data is helpful, such as gender or age.
Your medical answering service puts all of this information into a database. They can compile attendee lists, generate summary reports, or produce any other information output you may need.
Capture Contact Information
Another thing you may want to know about your attendees is how to reach them. The best time to obtain this is at the point of registration, as they’ll likely assume it’s a condition of attendance. (Once they’re at the event, they may be less inclined to share it.) Your answering service can gather this for you as well. Common items include a phone number and email address. You may want to specifically request a cell phone number for any last minute communication, such as a change of location or a weather cancellation.
Your answering service can provide this information for you in tandem with your attendee list or in another format for another use, such as uploading it into a database for future events or other marketing initiatives.
Collect Billing or Insurance Information
While most classes are provided as a service at no cost, others may have an associated fee. Your answering service can gather billing information (and even send out invoices) or better yet, they can obtain a credit card number, either to charge at the time of registration or after the event takes place. They can run the charges through on your secure website or provide the information to you for later processing.
Healthcare insurance may cover some events, in which case the answering service can procure the needed insurance details for later submission.
Send Out Reminders
With all the needed information and a good number of registrants, your event is set to go off without a hitch. But what if not everyone shows up? Some won’t, but your answering service can remind them, thereby increasing the odds of them making it there. Some will forget and others will change their mind, but a reminder phone call, email, or text will increase the likelihood of them showing up.
Plus if they can’t find the site or get lost, your answering service can help them out, as well as answer any last-minute questions.
If you found this helpful, you may also enjoy reading:
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- 3 Things a HIPAA Compliant Answering Service Shouldn't Do
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Peter DeHaan, is CEO of Peter DeHaan publishing which produces print media periodicals and Internet-based publications, as well as media and informational websites. In addition, and TAS Trader. Notable websites and publications include: TAS Trader, which focuses exclusively on the needs, concerns, and opportunities of the Telephone Answering Service (TAS) Industry. It is written by the TAS Industry and is for the TAS Industry. Connections Magazine, which is the premier magazine for the Teleservices Call Center Industry and is distributed to qualified readers at call centers, contact centers, teleservice agencies, telephone answering services, and telemessaging companies.
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