How to choose a senior living call center

How to Choose a Senior Living Call Center: 5 Questions to Ask

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Wondering how to choose a senior living call center? Here are 5 important questions to ask—and what you should look for in the answers.

1. Are you locked into an annual contract?

Annual contracts stink. Why should you be locked into a whole year? Or be required to pay a penalty if you break the contract because you’re not happy with the service?

Being able to pay as you go makes more sense for everyone, including the call center. How so? Well, if you could conceivably cancel at any time, the call center will be much more motivated to deliver superior service every day. This great service will make you a happy customer. Happy customers become loyal customers and good sources of referrals (which will make the call center happy).

2. What sort of training does the call center provide?

Call center staff should receive training about the senior living industry in general and your community in particular.

Ideally, you’d want to work with a call center that specializes in senior living. This way, the call center staff will already be ahead of the curve since they’ll have an understanding of things like . . .

  • Different types of senior living lifestyles. Think independent living, assisted living, memory care, active adult, and so forth.
  • Questions that will help uncover a caller’s immediate needs. Is the caller interested in booking a tour? Do they have questions about amenities? The call center staff should be able to address these questions.
  • How to properly represent your brand and the senior living industry. Remember, the caller isn’t going to know they’ve reached a third-party service. The caller will assume the person answering their calls is part of your community.

3. Is it “just” a call center—or does the call center offer a true lead management solution?

There’s nothing wrong with “just” a call center. But if you’re going to make this investment, wouldn’t it make sense for the call center staff to do more than simply act as a glorified answering service?

Think about why you’re considering a call center in the first place. You probably suspect something’s “off” with your current sales process when potential leads call your community. You might not know exactly where things fall apart, but you know it starts when a prospect calls, especially after hours.

If this is the case, you don’t need “just” an answering service. You need a lead management solution, one where the call center staff can answer specific questions about your community, properly qualify callers, and funnel them into the right channels for follow-up and further communications.

For example, is the caller ready for an immediate sales interaction? Or are they still in the early stages and would benefit from email nurturing? Does the call center staff have experience with your senior living CRM so that they can properly score the lead and enter the person into the appropriate next stage for follow-up?

Bottom line: If what you need is a true lead management solution, then the senior living call center should seamlessly become an extension of your sales and marketing teams. And not every call center is capable of doing that, which is precisely why you need to ask.

4. Does the call center meet and/or comply with regulatory requirements?

Compliance matters! You want to use a provider that meets regulatory requirements, such as HIPAA, TCPA, and various federal, state, and local consumer privacy laws (like CCPA) while recording up to 100% of interactions in a fully-compliant manner.

When vetting call centers, ask about things like . . .

  • Encryption
  • Automated and on-demand masking
  • Consent-based recording
  • Retention options

5. How’s the call center’s uptime?

You’re paying a senior living call center to TAKE CALLS, not lose them. Look for a provider that can offer a high-reliability environment with 99% uptime and no actual downtime for maintenance windows.

Your call center should never lose a call or session due to the center’s infrastructure going down, and there should never be any disruption of active or queued sessions or calls.

Need a recommendation? Say hello to LeadGenie!

We’re proud to offer LeadGenie. It’s more than a call center, it’s our senior living contact center solution. Check out the LeadGenie website to learn more!