Spruce Call Flows Best Practices

If your organization is subscribed to Spruce's Communicator plan, but does not have call flows enabled, please refer to this article on Phone Trees to learn how to manage your phone tree.

Call flows allow your practice to structure communication with patients and increase your efficiency. The two most important factors to keep in mind as you’re designing your call flows are creating a great patient call experience and considering how the call flow will impact your practice’s day to day operations. 

Depending on your practice, there are many ways that call flows can be used to increase your practice’s productivity: 

• When paired with a schedule, call flows enable you to handle calls differently depending on the time or day.  
• Phone trees or auto-attendants can be used to divide communication and deliver information to the caller without taking up staff time.
• Post-call actions enable you to create automated workflows like texting the caller back if they record a voicemail. 

Dividing Communication with a Phone Tree/Auto Attendant

This video goes over how to create a basic phone tree including some of the categories of calls discussed below. You can see how the call flow builder allows you to direct patients to communicate with your practice more effectively as well as streamlining how you organize your communication!

Recommendations for How to Handle Different Inbound Call Types

When deciding on how to manage your incoming calls we suggest considering what types of calls you’re receiving and how you would like to handle those calls most effectively. Here are some common categories of calls:

• New patient inquiries - Practices often want to prioritize these calls and have them reach staff immediately. This could involve setting up a phone tree branch that rings multiple team members at once. Alternatively, you could configure calls to ring through to team members before a menu is presented, to ensure callers do not need to choose an option to reach your staff. 
• Current patient calls regarding administrative questions or scheduling - How existing patient calls are handled is very practice specific. Some practices prefer to  redirect current patients to communicate through the Spruce app or  their EMR portal, so they send  these calls directly to a voicemail with instructions. Other practices may prioritize these calls, having them ring through to staff. 
• Refill requests and clinical questions -  Since clinicians often can't answer calls during the day, we usually recommend against having these calls ring directly to them. It's better to set realistic expectations for callers: if no one is available to answer, the option shouldn't ring. Some practices prefer to redirect these inquiries to a different form of communication like the Spruce app or an EMR portal.  
• Information about your practice - If you’re receiving a lot of calls regarding your fax number, directions, what insurance you take, etc., we recommend including an info option on your phone tree. This cuts down on the number of calls staff need to answer and allows these callers to get information quickly.

Examples of Different Call Flow Use Cases

There are a number of specific use cases for call flows that may be relevant to your practice. 

Creating a Call Flow with a Directory Option

Some practices set up a directory option that will allow callers to connect to a specific clinician. To do this you would create a sub-menu with options for each clinician. This video demonstrates how to set up a directory:

Creating a Call Flow with a Language Option

Some of our customers divide calls by the language spoken by the caller. This often entails a two tier menu that has two different submenus- one for each language. This video goes over how to create something of this kind:

Creating a Call Flow with an Urgent Escalation

After hours many of our customers need to be alerted to urgent inquiries but want to give their patients the option to also leave a non-urgent message to be handled the next business day. For this configuration you can set up two options on your menu and then use post-call actions to notify clinicians of an urgent voicemail. This video goes over this:

Creating a Call Flow with "Secret" Extension

There are instances where a practice may need to allow specific patients to reach a designated person or team directly, without making that extension available to all incoming callers.

A common example of this is enabling patients of a particular doctor to contact that physician or their direct team, while ensuring that other callers (such as new patients or patients of other providers) do not have this direct access. This specialized routing can be achieved by configuring an unannounced option within your current Call Flow greeting.

1. Go to: Settings > Phone System > Call Flows > New Call Flow (or edit your existing).
2. What happens when there is an incoming call?  - Play a greeting with a menu of options
3. Add your Menu greeting/recording for example: "Hello, you've reached YOUR PRACTICE NAME. To leave a voicemail for your doctor, please stay on the line and wait for the beep." 
4. If no menu option is selected: Record a voicemail - No greeting
5. Add option 1 (or whatever number) to Ring Phones and select the Ring Group. 
6. If no one answers the call > Record a Voicemail (adding your greeting). 
   1. *** The default timeout is 8 seconds on the main menu, that means that if the caller does not press the option (ie. 1) within that time, they will be directed to your voicemail greeting. You might want to trim that down to around 3-5 seconds to allow callers that know to press 1, while cutting down on the time to wait for the voicemail beep for the random callers. To do that:
      1. On the main menu: ADVANCED Menu Settings > Timeout delay

Text-to-Speech Tips

• The automated voice may mispronounce certain names. Use phonetic spelling when needed (for example, use "So-FEE-uh" instead of "Sophia").
• If your message contains a phone number, it can be written out with parentheses (for example, (415) 212-5555) or dashes (e.g., 415-212-5555).
• Avoid abbreviating words (for example, use "Apartment" instead of "Apt").
• For messages in languages other than English, AI Text-to-Speech is recommended for optimal results.

Frequently Asked Questions

How many menu options should my Spruce call flow have?

Best practice is 3-4 options maximum. More than 4 increases caller confusion and drop-offs.

Should I use AI text-to-speech or record my own voice for call flow prompts?

Both work. AI text-to-speech (available on Communicator) is easy to update. Human recordings sound more personal. Many practices use human recordings for the main greeting.

How do I test my call flow before patients hear it?

Call your Spruce practice number from an external phone and walk through each menu option to verify routing and audio quality.