Getting the right technology solution is only half the story.
Many organizations are already using live chat to make patients’ lives easier by scheduling appointments, discussing billing issues, or locating essential information quickly and easily. But how do you protect patient privacy?
Best-in-class live chat solutions like Velaro offer security features specifically for health care customers, but if your agents are under-trained, they’ll be unable to leverage some of those features—and the resulting benefits.
Here are five areas in which all customer service agents working in the health care industry should be well versed to protect customers and keep patient privacy front and center:
#1 Mask Sensitive Data
If a patient passes sensitive data through live chat, ensure your chat reps are prepared to initiate data masking rules. Better yet, enable automated data masking and procedures that ensure your customer service agents won’t see or have to react to personal patient data.
#2 Block IP Addresses as Needed
Unfortunately, not all chat sessions will be eager patients looking to schedule appointments. Chats, bots, trolls, and other nefarious internet characters target live chat solutions hoping to find easy access to company data and personal information. Leading live chat solutions like Velaro allow representatives to block IP addresses to protect your site and your patients’ data.
#3 Follow Data Management Rules
Ensure chat reps know when to save, purge and audit live chat information. You can help your reps by setting up data automation rules in Velaro, such as automatically saving chat transcripts on secure servers when conversations are complete. Additionally, your representatives should know when to trigger system emails and should be armed with your company’s terms, conditions and privacy policies. Set up regular trainings and quizzes to ensure your company policies are well understood.
#4 Review Chat Audits
Customizable chat audits can be set up in leading live chat tools, and Velaro offers you the option to automatically send detailed audit reports to your reps and managers. These reports allow customer service teams to review chats regularly and ensure all critical privacy to-do’s were met with each engagement.
#5 Stick to Your Chat Console
Finally, coach reps to always use the live chat console. If they’re not properly trained, they won’t be aware that 100% of their duties can be completed from within the Velaro chat interface. CRM systems can be updated, patient and internal emails can be sent related to chats, and privacy activities can be executed all within one interface.
About the Author
Alex Bloom is president and co-founder of Velaro, a provider of live chat software built to support the enterprise. Bloom, a serial entrepreneur with more than three decades of software industry experience, is based in Velaro’s Los Angeles office.
