Providing Excellent Customer Service

No matter the industry, be it healthcare, technology, education or anything else – companies are looking for ways to provide the best customer service possible. Which makes sense. Excellent customer service increases retention, company image, referrals and ultimately, profits.  So, what can a healthcare organization do to provide customer service?

Unlimited answers

A simple web search for “how to provide excellent customer service” generates an uncountable number of results (at least for human interactions – Google produced “about” 755 million results). There are tons of articles, blogs, posts, advertisements out there telling us how to maximize our customer service. And there are just about as many “solutions” out there as there are sources. And there are many sources out there too.

In a way, most of these various sources are both right, and not right. Yes, a lot of these tips and solutions will help you to provide better customer (patient) service. But the truth is that some of those tips will work for one clinic but not work for another. Just the location and region of a clinic can create differences in strategy for providing the best service possible. 

A simpler solution

The best way to provide excellent customer service is to simply care. Genuinely and authentically care for your patients. “CARE” is literally half of the word healthCARE.  When you CARE (whether it is for your patients, staff, family, friends, etc.) it SHOWS. And that’s the difference. The clinics and healthcare systems that really CARE, provide the absolute best customer service to their patients. 

How do we care? 

“CARE” sounds simple, but what does that mean, and how does it work? Well, the reality is that it isn’t an overnight solution. To genuinely and authentically care for patients requires a change in clinic culture. Building a patient-centered organization is a process that requires the entire staff to be on board and share the same vision. A healthcare organization needs to have a plan, and a way to keep employees accountable to that plan. Accountability is very important here. Most major fast-food chains have required customer service training, but you can tell when there is accountability to that training. That’s why Chick-Fil-A is just as famous for their customer service as they are for their chicken, because they truly hold their staff accountable. 

Planning and accountability 

When an organization wants to CARE and build a patient-centered culture they need a plan, and a way to keep staff accountable to that plan. If they currently have no customer service training, that is the first place to start. Once the organization begins equipping the staff with the tools to be patient service experts, there must be some accountability. This requires not only making sure staff is utilizing the tools they’ve gained, but also regular repetition of material (how many times have we all sat in a training session and all the information is forgotten in a month?). When the entire clinic staff is consistently putting the patient first and following the best practices for patient services, the patients are going to notice.

The biggest challenge 

The biggest challenge, however, is time. Putting together a plan takes time. Figuring out how to keep employees accountable takes time. Building a training schedule takes time. Training itself takes time. In fact, hopefully, over time there is still small amounts of training taking place continually to keep the staff on the same page and always learning to better care for patients. We believe in putting in the time to create a repeatable and consistent training program where you provide powerful and relevant content, an opportunity to role play and discuss real life examples.  

Continually learning how to serve patients better is part of providing the best service possible.

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Customers may forget what you said, but they’ll never forget how you made them feel !

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