East Trees Health Centre is a Bristol-based medical practice. With over 1600 patients, across a range of different demographics, speaking a range of different languages – their reception and call handling team were desperate for a modernised telephone system that could work for them. We visited Val Denton, the practice manager to get their views on the Yo Experience. Here’s what she had to say…
Here’s a transcript of the interview:
Tell Us Who You Are And A Little Bit About Your Business…
I’m Val Denton, I’ve been a practice manager for over 30 years now – working in practices in and around Bristol and Western Supermare, where I live.
We’re a primary care GP health centre, so we’ve got 16000 patients with different demographics and lots of different languages to deal with. So our reception team really do have a challenge every single day.
Why Did You Choose To Go With Yo Telecom?
I inherited the existing telephone system when I moved here. That was already in place and it had some serious limitations, as well as the service wasn’t very good. Patients were complaining. I’d been shopping around for a while, but it gets very confusing with telephone providers. They will promise you the world and I’m not a very techy person. I just like things in plain English. Yotel actually laid it on the line with exactly what I needed, I said what I thought I needed, what I hoped they could provide – and they did it! That was really impressive.
You Now Have The Ability To Queue Patients Calling Your Practice, How Has This Helped You?
So I used to get an awful lot of complaints, mainly about the phone system. The service we provide our patients – the care is great – but the one complaint was the fact that they were queuing on the phone for far too long. They were reaching the top of the queue and then getting cut off, the messages were too long, it was all based on the telephone system basically. The receptionists were getting very frustrated cause they were receiving a lot of complaints, and I was receiving a lot of written complaints. I was promising patients we would get a new system in place, so I had to put my money where my mouth was. Since then, the queuing system has been really really good. It’s very efficient. There aren’t that many people queuing now. I can see how long they’re queuing for. The messages are a lot shorter. We’ve set up a system whereby if you reach a certain number of patients queuing, something kicks in and tells them: “look, you’ve got a bit of a longer wait, you may need to call back, or continue if you’re happy to wait”. That really helped and my complaints have gone down considerably.
How Do You Use Your Call Reporting Wallboards, And How Have They Helped You?
We had a wallboard before but it just told me how many patients were queuing, how long they were waiting, and how many calls were abandoned. The wallboard I’ve got now actually has names on it. And it becomes a bit of a competition between the receptionists. It’s not a stick to beat them with. It’s not about checking up on them. They get quite interested to see how many calls are waiting and how long patients have been waiting and they try and get it all down to zero. It very rarely happens but it’s got a lot less. The waiting times are a lot less and I think psychologically, it makes people speed up a bit.
Are There Any Other Standout Features You’ve Found Useful With Your Yo System?
Call Recording is also a key feature. We never had call recording and since we’ve had it, I can actually listen to telephone calls adhoc. So I can use that for training, but also when people complain about our receptionists, because they do frequently. I can actually say: “no, she did not shout at you” – because I’ve got that all recorded. The beauty of Call Recording is that you keep it for 12 months, so you can just do a search, define a search date and number and it’s all there, which is really really good.
How Do You Find The Switchover From Your Previous Provider To Yo?
The switchover was very very smooth. They did the whole thing in a week. They kept coming back either virtually or in-person to sort out individual phones, where I wanted extensions and headsets. We had all new equipment which was a real bonus because the equipment we had was really old. They all got new headsets. They all got state-of-the-art phones. We have an account manager and we also have a named individual who I now have his direct dial number, so I can ring him whenever I want something tweaking or if I need training or whatever. He’s always at the end of the phone. The beauty of Yotel’s support system is that you can just press 888 and get through to an engineer. Whereas with previous systems, you had to either email or ring and be put on hold, have a job reference number and have someone call you back. Well, we’ve got a direct line to the engineer and that’s really good. Not that we’ve had many major problems actually. I have to say, it’s very very rare since we’ve had the phone system, that we’ve had a problem.
Finally, Would You Recommend Yo Telecom To Others, And If Yes, Why?
As I said before, I’ve shopped around and I think with Yotel, it’s about the personal service you get. It’s about listening to what I wanted and tweaking it to suit me and the business rather than: “this is the package we’ve got”. They also bought out our old licenses, our previous contract, so we’re not paying any more money. In fact, we’re saving money. And they’re there at the end of the phone – I can’t fault them for that – so I’d certainly recommend them.
If you’re interested in getting set up with a Yo Telephone system and/or Wi-Fi system, or just want to find out more about what we can do for you and your business, then get in touch today!
The Yo Experience:
Step 1: Complete our online form below, or give us a call.
Step 2: Book a consultation with one of our agents; Either online or on-location.
Step 3: Choose the best package for you. Pay only for what you need.
Step 4: Your new system will be delivered the next day.
Step 5: Within 7 days, an expert Yo engineer will arrive to fully install your new system; quickly & quietly.
Step 6: With extensive staff training and 24/7 support, we’re here whenever you need us.
You can also find more of our customer testimonials and hear how we’ve helped other businesses over on our YoTelecom YouTube Channel.
