If you are in the healthcare industry, you need a way for patients to contact your business 24/7. This means you must have some kind of answering service in place. However, what is the best service for your needs and how can you take care of patients and business associates while not paying astronomical fees every month. Flat rate answering services may be the solution to this problem.
What Does “Flat Rate” Mean?
Flat rate means you are charged a specific fee each month and it does not go up or down from month to month. This is much different than a usage based service. With a usage based fee service you may be given a specific number or calls or minutes each month. Anything over that is usually charged a significant fee. Let’s look at an example.
You sign up with a service and are charged a set amount as long as you do not have over 5000 calls per month. This might seem like a good deal as you may average less than this amount each month. However, what happens if there is a flu epidemic and your office gets twice the normal amount of calls. You extra fees could be as much as one dollar per minute, and this could put your monthly fee through the roof. When you choose flat rate answering services, these kinds of surprises cannot happen. It doesn’t matter how many calls you get, your fees stay the same.
Additional Benefits of Flat Rate Services
When you are charged a flat fee each and every month, budgeting is simple, because you know exactly what the charges will be. Plus, when you choose a trusted flat rate service, you will receive these benefits:
- Physician privacy – if you call back a patient, your caller ID is blocked from the system. This way, your cell phone or private residence phone number is not given out.
- Call transfer options – you can receive calls from the system at home, on your cell, via text message or through email.
- Voice mail transcription – you can receive a word for word account of your messages in the form of emails, so there are no mistakes.
- Call forwarding
- Fax to email services
- Disaster recovery
- No hidden fees
Once you have the right flat rate answering services in place, you can relax, knowing all your important calls will be filtered and prioritized, and you will not have to worry about your answering service putting you over budget.
