Complaint: "The Voice Message Starts Half Way Through"

You may hear that some patients complain that their voice mail message that was left started half way through the message.  This happens in some small percentage of cases (usually less than 5% of the messages that go out) when our system cannot hear the "BEEP" of the answering machine or voice mail.  

Option 1: If the patient has a home-based answering machine, and picks up the call after the answering machine has answered the call...

If your patient has an older home-based answering machine that has already answered the call, this could explain the complaint.  How?  Our system begins playing the reminder message as soon as the phone is answered by a person or an answering machine.  So, in this case, when the patient has picked up the phone after a little while, then they have missed the beginning of the reminder message and will hear it "half way though".   

How to correct for this?  
Ask the patient to "Press 3 to repeat from the beginning of the message."  If the patient is listening to the live call, when they press 3 the system will repeat the message.

Option 2:  If the patient is not listening to the live call, but a recorded version from their voice mail or answering machine, then...

Ask the Patient to: "Please Listen To the End of the Recording to Hear the Full Message"

In cases where the patient is actually listening to a play back of the message from their answering machine or voice mail and the beginning is cut-off, please ask the patients to listen to the full message, because we always repeat the answering machine version at the end of playing the 'person answers' version of the message.

 

 

95% Time We Hear the "BEEP" -  Works Great!

To allow for the best patient experience, as soon as the phone call is answered by a person or a machine/voice mail, we play the "Person Answers" version of the outgoing message. 

If a person answers the phone, they hear the full message.

In about 95% of the time, our system detects the "BEEP" and re-starts the message from the beginning and plays the "Answering Machine" version.  The patient hears the full message from the beginning on their answering machine or voice mail.

5% of the time.. We Don't Hear the "BEEP" - Message Starts Part Way Through

If an answering machine picks up, then the patient's outgoing message starts playing, then it should play a BEEP at the end.  In the cases where our system missed hearing the "BEEP", the voice mail recording will start half way through the "Person Answers" message.  That's why some patients complain the message started half-way through on their voice mail system.  Please ask them to listen to the end to hear the full complete message, which is repeated at the end.

Why do we miss the BEEP?

It could be a number of reasons:

- Bad phone line connection

- Old home answering machine

- Beep set too soft

- Other noise on the phone line

Seems like more than 5%?

The reason you might feel that it's more than 5% is because these patients are much more likely to give you a call that the other 95% where it worked just fine.

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