Top 5 Features You Need for the Best Medical Waiting Room TV

Shopping for the best waiting room TV service for your hospital, urgent care, or dentist office? This article lists the top 5 features any good waiting room TV experience should come with. However, if you’re short on time like many people in the healthcare industry and want to jump right into exploring options; we suggest you explore this full-featured option.

#1: The Best Waiting Room TV Service has the Best Content

Quality content is where most custom TV solutions fall flat. Cable TV has a plethora of channel choices, without great ways to control what actually plays (or doesn’t play) on your TV. Technology companies that provide a box and access to a small library of content have the opposite issue, only having access to a very limited set of content that continually repeats.

Throw a dart at a board covered in custom TV providers; 9 times out of 10 you’ll hit one that exclusively plays medical content. Or just as bad, one that likes to pretend they’re partners with major TV networks because they have the licensing rights to a few clips of popular talkshows. Those clips are thinly veiled advertisements to get viewers to watch the real shows when they get home, and don’t serve to do much for them while they are in your space. It isn’t proper waiting room entertainment, and neither are medical videos that go into graphic detail.

Visitors want to see videos that are fun and entertaining. Playlistslooping videos, and purely medical-related simply don’t cut it; not if your goal is to provide the most-comfortable patient experience possible. The best waiting room TV service is one that:

  1.  Comes with a large library of content
  2.  Doesn’t loop
  3.  Isn’t exclusively medical-related
  4.  Is full of rich, meaningful content your patients will enjoy watching.

#2: Customization

Whether you’re a hospital, urgent care, or dentist; your brand is unique, and so your waiting room TV ought to reflect that as well. The best waiting rooms services are tailored to your brand, and give you the ability to upload your own personal videos, and messaging, to be featured alongside the provided content.

A good custom TV network also lets you pick and choose what kinds of content shows up on your TV. It should allow users to block or remove videos that you or your visitors feel are unsettling, inappropriate, or not up to your office’s standards.

When you’re in control of your TV you’re able to make it all about your brand, get more milage out of your personal videos, and better act on visitor feeback.

#3: Easy-To-Use System

Managing a custom TV network can be a headache, that’s why finding a streaming TV service with an easy-to-use management system is important. Uploading a video or image shouldn’t be harder than clicking a button and uploading it. Likewise, selecting which videos to turn on/off should be as easy as selecting the video or category, and switching it on/off.

As simple as that sounds, you’d be surprised how many management systems are needlessly complicated, or require a computer science degree to navigate. These services are no good. Unfortunately, it’s hard to know for sure if the TV software you’re looking at will come with an easy-to-use system until you’re using it. Do yourself a favor and schedule a demo with whichever provider you’re considering, and ask questions about their management tools. Make sure you feel confident in your ability to use the system.

The mark of a good TV provider is one that will take the time to walk you through their service, so don’t hesitate to ask for a meeting.

#4: Social Media Integration

A rare gem of a feature. A waiting room TV service with the ability to integrate posts from your Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram accounts directly to your TV is harder to come by.It’s a powerful, worthwhile feature for those whose medical offices are active on social media– generating everything from social media followers, to repeat visits.

Don’t be fooled by TV software providers that boast this feature in the form of uploading screenshots of your social media pages to your TV. This is NOT social media integration. Or others that will interrupt TV programming to show your social media posts. There is nothing worse for your message than getting in between them and something they are engaged with.

Real social media integration is placed thoughtfully, shown in real-time, automatic, and safe; only drawing your most-recent posts, and only those posted by your staff, or social media manager.

If this feature piqued your interest, we recommend you checking out Social Media TV, which features live social media integration the way it’s meant to work.

#5: Strategy & Support

One might think that it goes without saying that a provider of any service should come with helpful strategies and customer support. Unfortunately, the world isn’t quite there yet.  There are so many technology companies that are coming up with TV solutions, but they neglect to provide their clients with the strategy and support needed to truly be successful.

When researching potential candidates for your waiting room TV service, be sure to understand their support structures; not only for any technical questions that may arise during use, but for strategic assistance in getting the most out of the platform you select.

So what does quality customer support look like? TV software providers that go the extra mile assign dedicated customer support managers to individual clients. It’s always easier to reach out to a person that knows your account as opposed to calling an 800 number or filling out an online support form. You want to aim to have a dedicated customer support representative who knows you, knows your brand, and is familiar with the goals of your practice.