Cure for Common Customer Service
by Jerry Stone

All healthcare organizations, including physician practice organizations, are susceptible to catching a very contagious “virus” known as Common Customer Service. Healthcare organizations in particular have a unique challenge when it comes to providing excellent customer service -- healthcare consumers have always been called -- patients.

Patients have traditionally been expected to act, and behave, quite differently than most consumers.

For Example;

• Patients take pleasure in excellent customer service. Consumers expect excellent customer service.


• Patients are loyal to their physicians, sometimes in spite of a less-than-smooth running organization. Consumers expect loyalty from their physician, and expect their physician to insist that the organization run smoothly.


• Patients are often directed as to what to do, where to be, and when to be there. Consumers evaluate their options and then make a decision.


• Patients are willing to wait. Consumers become impatient having to wait and ultimately find alternatives.

You could, no doubt, add your own experiences and the list would go on and on. The reality is, there’s a consumer-driven healthcare revolution happening right now. Patients are behaving more like consumers everyday, and there’s much to be done within most healthcare organizations to ensure survival, and in best cases, thrive, as the consumer-driven revolution permeates healthcare everywhere.

What can we do -- now?
Begin to think of, and treat patients like the consumers they are. Begin to manage and operate your healthcare business in such a way that the culture is transformed into a culture of service-excellence, delivering both compassionate care, and, outstanding customer service.

How do we get there?
Unfortunately, there’s no “magic-bullet”. It would be nice to hold a meeting or two and declare, “Listen-up everybody, let it be said that we are now consumer-focused! Treat patients the way you would want to be treated. Do the ‘right’ thing! Remember the Golden-rule, show compassion, go the extra mile…” On and on we could go, pumping out the feel-good rhetoric, faster than some employees could roll their eyes. Would we have the best of good intentions? Without question. Would we see positive change as a result of the rhetoric? Usually just the opposite. Quickly we’d find ourselves facing reality again – trying to create a culture of service-excellence within an organization that has for years, functioned and survived based on a different set of performance measures and reward systems.

What is the cure for common customer-service?
Here’s an overview -- let’s take a look at the; Subjective, Objective, Assessment, and Plan.

S – Subjective:
First and foremost, ask the consumers (patients) what they think about the services they experience, the products they receive, and their overall perception of the care-experience. Customer/patient feedback is essential. Understand, and accept, that the customer’s perception of their experience is their reality. As part of gathering subjective feedback, ask the providers to tell you how they think the organization is doing in terms of providing unparalleled customer service. As important, ask the employees to give you feedback – what do they hear, what do they observe, and what do they think!

If your organization has an on-going patient experience feedback process in place, you’re on the right track. IF not, you’ll need to implement one as part of your improvement plan.

O – Objective:
Develop a short list of “vital signs” that directly correlate to the organization’s ability to survive, and as mentioned, perhaps thrive, in a consumer-driven healthcare market place. It’s important the vital signs be easily monitored and measured. Some objective measurements may include items such as; wait-time, cycle-time, support-staff occupancy, schedule capacity and appointment slot utilization, patient compliment ratios (compliments per 1000 patients), patient complaint ratios (complaints per 1000 patients), patient service assessment ratings, and so on. Create an on-going, systematic way of monitoring and measuring your organization’s vital signs. Keep the vital signs in front of decision makers, day in and day out. Couch and counsel front-line employees and otherwise modify the operation proactively as the vital signs fluctuate beyond acceptable service level ranges.

A – Assessment:
Diagnose the organization’s condition. Some vital signs are clear and easy to measure, such as wait-times in excess of the organization’s standard. However getting at the root-cause may require more evaluation. For example understanding and getting at the root-cause of excessive wait time (patient-flow bottlenecks), and determining what process or multiple processes should be modified to remedy the patient flow impediment will usually require in-depth examination and analysis. Some vital signs may not be as straightforward to measure and may be difficult to remedy. For example, a patient might comment, “the person that answered the phone was rude to me when I booked my appointment”. While a report from a patient about an employee being “rude” is certainly a clear indication that the customer is unhappy, and, will no doubt impact the “complaints per 1000 patients” vital sign ratio, even so, rudeness is the symptom of a problem, and not the root-cause. The root-cause of the “rude” behavior may be a system or process problem, or, a human resource issue, or, a combination of many variables. Suppose for a moment that the appointment scheduler was faced with having to search and search for an “open” appointment slot every time a patient called needing a same day or next day appointment. (“Open slot” is defined here as an appointment slot that can be booked by the appointment scheduler without having to obtain further “permission” to do so.) And, suppose certain restrictions were placed on the provider’s schedules, restrictions that may not necessarily be aligned with the organization’s mission and vision of creating a culture of service-excellence. Under these conditions, the appointment scheduler becomes frustrated. The customer/patient in turn detects and interprets scheduler’s frustration as having been treated rudely. In this case, the perceived rudeness is most likely a symptom of the restricted schedule. Frustration levels that build-up over time, oftentimes elevated as a result of the appointment scheduler having to obtain “permission” to double-book the patient, or, risk using an appointment slot without “permission”, which will most certainly result in a verbal backlash down the road, surfaces as “rudeness”. An accurate diagnosis of the “rudeness” root-cause focuses on the scheduling protocols and scheduling restrictions, and does not necessarily point towards the appointment scheduler as having a lack of concern, or the appointment scheduler’s poor customer-service, or lack of interpersonal skills.

P – Plan:
While the last part of the S.O.A.P. note is the plan, the plan is not, as you can imagine, the last part of changing the organization’s culture – it is the beginning. The plan at this juncture may include anything from additional analysis, to restructuring of the organization. The plan will almost always include assessment of management/leadership, re-visiting management orientation/training, revamping employee orientation/training, and perhaps re-writing new-hire procedures and orientation. Furthermore, if certain employees are in positions they are not well suited for, repositioning these employees to more suitable roles within the organization may be required before the transformation in culture can be advanced.

What next?
“Closing the gap between knowing and doing”, as described by Fred Lee in his book, 9 ˝ Things Your Would Do Differently, IF Disney Ran You Hospital, is one of the key success factors to effectively changing an organization’s culture. Another resource that MedicalGPS has used successfully as a practical reference is the book by Kristin Baird titled, “Customer Service in Healthcare, A Grassroots Approach to Creating a Culture of Service Excellence”.

Close the gap between knowing and doing. Take action.
MedicalGPS has the resources to help your organization find the cure for common customer service. Please feel free to review our extensive set of analysis tools contained in, “The Patient Flow Solution”, MedicalGPS’ proprietary process improvement program designed especially for physician practice organizations.

MedicalGPS offers state-of-the-art patient experience survey technology, at an affordable price, providing real-time patient feedback to you and your leadership team. After you’re finished here, I invite you to visit MedicalGPS website for more information regarding M3-Patient Experience.