Time to consider a fresh approach to your facilities helpdesk?
As the healthcare landscape evolves, it’s time to reimagine the facilities helpdesk – no longer as a mere cost burden, but as an integral element synonymous with delivering high-quality, patient-centred care. Martin Anderson, CEO of Lemon Contact Centre, a 24/7 facilities helpdesk specialist based in the North East, advocates for a fresh perspective.
In the healthcare sector, maintaining top-notch facilities is imperative to uphold the commitment of providing high-quality services to patients. According to Martin, the facilities helpdesk plays a pivotal role behind the scenes in ensuring the efficiency of healthcare resources, creating an environment conducive to patient care, staff productivity, and overall well-being.
In any care environment, the foremost priority is the well-being of patients. An efficient facilities operation contributes to this by ensuring optimal performance of systems such as lifting equipment and medical gas, minimising downtime and preventing disruptions and frustrations to daily operations.
In 2024, the pressure on hospital staff and management is now greater than ever and it is important that facilities services are available around the clock to support the needs of the operation. However, with countless pressures on internal estates teams to maintain sometimes ageing infrastructure, this means it can be difficult to recruit, run and operate an internal facilities helpdesk 24-hours a day, 365 days per year.
Crucially, experienced outsources in the Business Process Outsourcing (BPO) sector, like Lemon, can help. With decades of experience in the facilities sector, an outsourced helpdesk provided by Lemon can address the challenge of internal resourcing and enable the delivery of 24/7 support quickly and efficiently. What’s more, detailed real-time reporting and the ability to integrate and utilise existing CAFM systems and processes, ensures a smooth handover of work between the in-house team and Lemon, with clear and transparent reporting available for the leadership teams.
The well-known benefits of flexibility and scalability that outsourcing brings means that services can be utilised during normal operational hours as overflow, out-of-hours, or as a full 24/7 solution, giving additional benefits and layers of resilience from a business continuity standpoint and often at reduced cost when compared to in-house recruitment and training.
In the dynamic and demanding field of healthcare, maintaining excellent facilities is non-negotiable for ensuring patient safety and operational efficiency. Incorporating a 24/7 outsourced helpdesk by Lemon into facilities management practices is potentially a smart strategic move, offering immediate assistance, promoting productivity, and contributing to long-term cost savings and patient care.
It may well be time for healthcare leaders to embrace this shift in perspective and leverage outsourced expertise for a more cost effective and patient-centric approach to the facilities helpdesk.
Based in North East England, Lemon Contact Centre manages over 100 contracts across the UK and Europe, providing business process outsourcing (BPO) services around the clock to predominantly facilities, logistics and care sectors through its dedicated and bureau agent services.
Boasting the highest levels of ISO accreditation, PCI-DSS compliance and industry specific certifications, Lemon are able to provide seamless customer service solutions and insightful reporting 24/7/365.