Why Helpdesk Tools Don't Work for Patient Engagement

In their own words, Zendesk calls itself Helpdesk software for Customer Support.

A commonly used industry definition describes helpdesk software as being used for “ensuring that all issues are ticketed and monitored such that tickets are never left unattended, forgotten, or lost”. [1]

While the image below is a simplification of a customer support or helpdesk process, the main point is that the process is very linear.

A customer comes to your company with an issue, you create a task and assign it to a person to resolve the issue, and that person (hopefully) fixes it.

After speaking with hundreds of companies building digital healthcare experiences, we’ve heard repeatedly that the problem is, that often in healthcare, managing and engaging patients throughout their care is not a linear process.

When digital healthcare companies select a HIPAA-compliant support desk tool like Zendesk to manage patients, almost immediately, they have to purchase the additional tools they need to tack on to make it work for their business.

Typically, this realization plays out like the following:

The helpdesk tool works well for managing and assigning tasks, but….

Problem: I can only send emails or messages through a website chatbot to resolve issues but now I want to send texts.

Solution: Guess I need to integrate a texting tool

Problem: I want to schedule synchronous appointments

Solution: I’ll use Calendly or Acuity

Problem: I need a way to track different activities and statuses for patients that aren’t able to be captured well in a ticket

Solution: Time to fire up Google Sheets!

Problem: My work’s gotten so manual because everything’s disconnected

Solution: Guess I’ll go hire an engineer to help build connections and automations

I’ll spare you from having to read 10 more examples, but, the fact of the matter is that the 1 purchase of a Helpdesk tool can suddenly balloon into a mess of 10+ tools.

Unlike helpdesk platforms, CRMs were designed for managing more than just support communications and tickets. Traditionally, a CRM should provide additional features like more communication options, documentation tools, and automation capabilities.

When healthcare professionals hear the word CRM, their mind typically jumps to a behemoth legacy system like Salesforce or a marketing-focused platform like HubSpot.

However, unlike the tools mentioned above, there are CRMs like Tellescope that were built from the ground up specifically for healthcare.

With a CRM that’s been designed for healthcare, workflows, and functionality will be designed in accordance with the needs of your clinical, marketing, and support teams.

For example, a traditional CRM will most likely have some ability to track a sales funnel so companies are able to track the progression of someone from prospective to paying customer. Similar to one of the pitfalls of helpdesk tools, most sales funnels are too generic to be applied for tracking patient progress.

A concept instead of a sales funnel that some companies like Tellescope leverage are a “Care Journey”. Instead of having a flow that goes from Point A to Point B, a journey lets teams map out the different scenarios or pathways a patient may go through.

With the extra bit of nuance, healthcare organizations are better able to stay on top of patient-related tasks, send out more tailored messages, and deliver personalized content based on a very specific scenario.

Interested to hear about how a Healthcare CRM can help consolidate, automate, and better serve the needs of your organization compared to your helpdesk tool?

Fill out the form below to learn how Tellescope can help.