today's hospital customer service
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Today's Hospital Customer Service
Mission Critical in Today’s Marketplace
Thomas Roman
www.linkedin.com/in/tomroman/
• Examine what confronts today’s competitive hospital care environment
• Discuss ways in which Customer Service can be designed into the health-care delivery systems
• Look at the impact of social networking, connectedness and new rules of Customer Service
• It is tangible, impactful and actionable
• Customer Service is linked to functional quality and measured by attributes commonly experienced by consumers
• Elevating customer service to the same level of importance as clinical quality requires two things: data about service levels and a look at hospital practices and cultural norms that may get in the way of service
• Through the mid 1990’s, treating or thinking of patients as, “Customers” would have generated outrage among health-care workers and administrators
(Howard 1999)
• Although patients may be consumers of our services, physicians have traditionally been considered hospitals' primary customers
• Patient’s don't differentiate between employees and independent medical staff members when they form their opinions about their hospital care
(Sanford 2011) • 30 percent of today’s financial reimbursement is tied to a
standardized survey, the Hospital Consumer Assessment of Healthcare Providers and Systems (HCAHPS)
• The factors of emotions, trust and control can influence a customer experience
• An organization’s commitment to an emotional platform can facilitate decisions regarding its processes, people and physical assets
(Dasu, Sriram, Chase, 2010)
• Different stages of the service cycle and different service offerings will lead to different emotions • For example, at a general hospital, the parents of a healthy new baby will be in a very different emotional place than the relatives of a patient who has just been admitted to the intensive care unit (Dasu, Sriram, Chase, 2010)
Time
Positive
Negative
Neutral
Problem Discovered
Admission
Treatment
Hospital Discharge
• Consistent customer service performance goes a long way toward building trust
• Although credentials, testimonials and recommendations are frequently important factors in trust, many customers make their judgments based on other cues, including a person’s behavior, problem solving skills and ability to communicate clearly
• Service providers design for control in two ways:
– allowing people to have behavioral control over parts of the service delivery process
– through cognitive control where even though customers can’t influence the process, they can see enough of the system to know that it’s well managed
• Customer service is a strategic imperative that belongs at the same table as strategic planning, marketing communications, branding and advertising
• Without a solid customer service focus, hospitals may begin to lose important managed care contracts and contracting abilities and therefore lose a large percentage of their insured customer base and have trouble remaining competitive in their area
• Customer service has to moved from being considered a “cost” to one of investment
• It is very quickly becoming a calculated driver that will be vital in providing brands with unique points of differentiation and businesses with sustainable competitive advantage
• In this age of service transition and increasing managed care market competition, hospitals must remain focused on quality and the consumer's needs, wants, and demands
• If your customer service is to become a strategic differentiator, it has to embody a new set of rules, guidelines and best practices
(Jaffe 2010)
– As was evidenced by the “Motrin Moms” story, Johnson & Johnson’s inability to address a mob of angry bloggers cost the brand its entire campaign
– A listening strategy tied to customer sentiment needs to be on, 24 x 7 x 365
• Every single employee in an organization represents the company
• They are a window into or out of the business; and as far as your customer is concerned, they are the only window
• Train customer service to anticipate and respond to customers who have a word-of-mouth distribution platform such as a website, blog, podcast or, community pulpit
• Be proactive with collecting information from customers—either through registration forms, profiles or surveys
• Ask them explicitly: do you have a blog, and if so, document the URL and research the blog
• “Customer Service” should not be any different from “serving customers”
• Be specific; suggest ideas; offer information of value; or recommend solutions from which both you and your customers will benefit
• Solve problems in real time
• The more time that elapses between problem and solution, the greater the risk of that problem mushrooming out of control
• Building on several of the earlier new rules is one fairly counterintuitive one:
– service can actually become a source of revenue for hospitals—not just directly (i.e., new business from old customers); but also indirectly (i.e. new business from new customers.)
• The more time elapses, the more likely a customer is to move a problem from the private to public and intensify it to a fever pitch
• Marketing is not a campaign; it’s a commitment
– We need to visibly demonstrate our commitment to our customers in practice and in action
– They need to explicitly feel its effect and benefits
• Old customer service “spoke when it was spoken to”
– New customer service anticipates requirements, listens attentively for customers in need, and proactively searches for problems to fix
• Whether anticipating next steps or responding to a clear and present complaint, as long as there’s action, there’s the potential to turn a negative into a positive
• Feedback loops need to be active, direct and effective at improving, evolving and moving the business forward
• This highlights an organization with an entirely new set of criteria, beliefs and characteristics that reflect a company truly in touch with its customer base
What is “backstage” in
your organization?
What does being “show
ready” mean?
How can you be sure that customers who are wrong are wrong
with dignity?
What opportunities are there to teach
customers something they may not have
known before?
Are employees ever guilty of providing
robotic service? How do they know?
How does the Everything Speaks
philosophy apply to your work setting?
• Value is based on unique, personalized experiences of consumers
• Customer service will need to be as important a goal as clinical quality
• The ability—or inability—to serve customers in this way will prove to be the ultimate differentiator that separates the winners from the losers
• Organizations will have to learn to focus on one consumer and their experience at a time, even if they serve 100 million consumers
• Howard, Julie. "Hospital Customer Service in a Changing Healthcare World: Does it Matter?" Journal of Healthcare Management 44.4 (1999): 312-25. ABI/INFORM Complete; ProQuest Health Management; ProQuest Research Library. Web. 23 Dec. 2012.
• Sanford, Kathleen D. "A New Customer Service Partnership for Hospitals and Physicians." Healthcare Financial Management 65.12 (2011): 48-52. ABI/INFORM Complete; ProQuest Health Management; ProQuest Research Library. Web. 6 Jan. 2013.
• http://changethis.com, The Customer Service Manifesto Joseph Jaffe Published March 3, 2010 6:00 p.m, Accessed 12/21/2012
• Dasu, Sriram, and B. Chase Richard. "Designing the Soft Side of Customer Service." MIT Sloan Management Review 52.1 (2010): 33-9. ABI/INFORM Complete; ProQuest Health Management; ProQuest Research Library. Web. 1 Jan. 2013.
• Thorpe, Dayle I. "Total Quality Service: Principles, Practices, and Implementation." Academy of Marketing Science.Journal 25.1 (1997): 90-2. ABI/INFORM Complete. Web. 6 Jan. 2013.
• Fottler, Myron D., et al. "Comparing Hospital Staff and Patient Perceptions of Customer Service: A Pilot Study Utilizing Survey and Focus Group Data." Health Services Management Research 19.1 (2006): 52-66. ABI/INFORM Complete; ProQuest Health Management. Web. 6 Jan. 2013.
• Havenstein, Heather. "Motrin Aching from Social Media Backlash." Computerworld 42.47 (2008): 10-. ABI/INFORM Complete; ProQuest Research Library. Web. 1 Jan. 2013
• Snow, Dennis. Lessons from the Mouse: A Guide for Applying Disney World’s Secrets of Success to your Organization, Your Career and Your Life. Orlando Fl, Snow and Associates, 2010
• Thorpe, Dayle I. "Total Quality Service: Principles, Practices, and Implementation." Academy of Marketing Science.Journal 25.1 (1997): 90-2. ABI/INFORM Complete. Web. 6 Jan. 2013.
• Fottler, Myron D., et al. "Comparing Hospital Staff and Patient Perceptions of Customer Service: A Pilot Study Utilizing Survey and Focus Group Data." Health Services Management Research 19.1 (2006): 52-66. ABI/INFORM Complete; ProQuest Health Management. Web. 6 Jan. 2013.