Setting Up The Perfect Medical Office Voicemail Greeting

All medical offices and clinics have the unfortunate experience of dealing with an overwhelming number of voicemails, and managing the information can be challenging!

By setting up a more thorough voicemail greeting, you can smartly route your calls and cut down on voicemail pile up. Considering a medical office answering service to help with overflow and after hours messaging? See how we can help.

Over the last 60+ years, Dexcomm has assisted many medical offices and medical receptionists with voicemail setup. Here are four easy steps that we recommend to set up yours: 

Interested in a free sample script? Get it here! 

1. Create A List of Call Types Your Office Receives

To best assist your callers and effectively route their calls, you will need to classify your call types.

For a medical office, call types may include billing, emergencies, appointments, cancellations, etc.

2. Determine How To Best Route Calls

1. If you have a small staff, setting up a standard voicemail greeting system may be a more practical approach. 
2. For a larger health organization with multiple departments, it makes more sense to route calls to their intended destinations by using an auto attendant.  For example, “If you have a question about billing, press 1. If you’d like to schedule an appointment, press 2. If this is a medical emergency, press 0 for an operator.” 
3. If you want every caller or patient to experience a professional and compassionate call, you may consider working with a medical office answering service. You can forward calls to an answering service after business hours, on holidays, during overflow, or any other time you may need help answering calls.

3. Draft A Script

Include Basic Information: Your voicemail greeting should include basic information such as your hours of operation and location. This will help you to screen out calls during office hours, and also unnecessary voicemail inquiries.

Give The Caller Instructions: Instruct the callers what topics you want them to leave voicemails for, and what topics you want them to call back for during office hours.

Many callers will be respectful of your wishes and follow your directives. This is extremely vital for reducing your voicemail volume.

Be Specific: Ask the caller for specific information when leaving a voicemail.
By asking for information such as full patient name, date of birth, and phone number, you can increase your chances of being able to successfully return a call, even if the message is difficult to decipher.

Explain Your Return Call Policy: In your after hours message for the medical office, be sure to state your return call policy for voicemail response.

By giving callers an estimate of when they can expect a return call from someone in your office, you can eliminate multiple phone calls from the caller, as well as reduce work for your staff members.

4. Set Up Your Voicemail

When recording your voicemail, feel free to adjust your script as needed to sound personable. 

You message should convey the same courtesy to your callers as a person would who is speaking to someone in your office. Saying things like "thank you for calling" and "have a nice day", in addition to watching your tone of voice, will help you to represent your office in a compassionate and professional manner. 
Your voicemail system should be easy to customize.

You want to be able to easily access and change your greeting for holidays or emergencies. Ease of set-up and modification is vital to customizing and streamlining calls on an as-needed basis.

Key Points

Using these four tips and the downloadable medical office script will help:

1. Create a thorough and helpful voicemail script fit for your office
2. Support and assist your customers in a positive and meaningful way
3. Reduce workload on your medical receptionists
4. Keep things in your medical office or dental office moving smoothly 24/7

Should you need any further assistance with after hour patient services, please do not hesitate to contact us.

Dexcomm is a Louisiana-based corporation that provides answering services to businesses and service agencies across the United States. We have been open since 1954, employ a staff of nearly 100 people, and our average client retention rate is 10+ years.