Peter Drucker certainly understood the real meaning of a great customer experience design, didn’t he? The end state quality of what the customer received was what counted. And that is true for Doctor customer experience. Including the experience the customer while he purchased the service. Often that is what was remembered the most.
Quality in a service or product is not what you put into it. It is what the client or customer gets out of it.
–Peter Drucker
When it comes to service you purchase from your physician, most people are more tolerant and more accepting than with most other businesses. But should it be that way, though?
It shouldn’t and here is why I conclude this.
What constitutes a great customer experience?
The quality of a business’s customer experience is ultimately determined by the way customers feel after their last interaction. If the customer is unhappy, the customer experience is bad. If the customer doesn’t have a feeling one way or the other, your business’s customer experience is mediocre. If the customer feels good, your business’s customer experience is satisfactory.
But if the customer feels delighted, your business’s customer experience is a substantial competitive advantage. (See our article on the laws of customer experience) That is the only one that matters to success to most companies. Why shouldn’t it be the same for your physician’s office?
In my most recent past, I had to make a change with my general physician when my physician retired. I was very satisfied with his service and customer experience offered. I have been with my new physician for seven months and four visits to date. Here are ten customer experience comparisons between the two physicians and their office staff.
Personalization
Patients don’t want to be treated like a number. They want to feel valued, understood, and most importantly, listened to. Their belief? That the money they spend with your practice entitles them to such treatment. The differentiation of the experience your doctor delivers will, therefore, be at least in part contingent on your ability to personalize his interactions with patients.
That means knowing their name, their previously expressed health issues, or listening to the particulars of their current situation. Lots of small ways to create customer personalization.
Lots of help and directions
The entire physician’s staff should be encouraged to be ‘assertively friendly.’ They should seek out those who need help before they come looking for help. And most importantly close quickly on open actions. The new doctor’s staff are extremely slow in closing actions (up to 4-5 days) and get things wrong too many times. Not a good situation … in fact is unacceptable in my mind.
Examples of poor customer service in health care
Customers like knowing that the doctor and his staff care. Great service is the top reason customers keep giving their business to doctors and the top reason they recommend them to others. It is critical to ensure that your practice delivers great service care.
The care that results in good results and great experiences that are remembered and talked about. So far based on action item response time and errors, the new doctor, and staff indicates they care much more about the business revenue than their care and service.
Two-way conversations begin with doctors and staff listening carefully before responding. They should also take care patients understand the ‘whys’ for the doctors’ decisions.
Being stuck on transmit mode in a two-way conversation won’t go anywhere fast. The new physician’s office indicates that they can’t take the time to do much explaining to patients.
Follow through lacking
If a patient is told X will be done, they should feel that it will happen. Hopefully faster and better than promised. If something unexpected happens, a good experience demands the customer be notified and kept informed. The staff is not good at putting closure dates on commitments … which is not a good sign.
Don’t meet expectations
If promises are not kept, expectations by the patient not achieved, negative experiences result. Too negative and your practice will lose the patient forever. The absolute last thing that either the practice or the new patient desire. But that is what is happening.
No interest in patient feedback
Many patients are itching to tell you how to improve. If they are not given an opportunity, it degrades the experience. Likewise, patients always feel good when they see positive improvements. Few practices that I have ever been associated with seek feedback, or notice much when it is given unsolicited.
Doctor customer experience … no personalized engagement
Doctors and staff who rarely smile and engage socially at one on one engagement are at a very serious disadvantage in being able to create a delightful customer experience. In the longer term, a practice needs to build relationships with all patients. Hard to do with no personalized engagement as with the new practice.
Time
Most people today suffer from too little time, and it is an increasingly important factor. Time is the one thing that even the richest patients doesn’t have enough of. So patients’ perceptions about your practice’s customer experience are largely influenced by time. Often the meaning correlates with convenience. This means you have to reduce the time it takes for them to:
Find you
Engage with you
Communicate their problem
For you to resolve that problem.
Both practices were about the same on this criteria.
Doctor customer experience … staff expertise
Staff expertise.
Patients need to believe that your practice’s staff are good at what they do. They must perceive that your staff is well-informed about products, services, policies, issues, and any other relevant subject matter.
So, to project their best knowledge to your patients, you have to make sure that they are fully empowered with information that’s accurate, complete, and up-to-date. And the ability and time to provide sound advice. In the new practice, it appears to me that they have too many patients leaving them with not enough time to provide good service.
You can’t neglect your patients’ experience if you want them to stay with or recommend your practice.
The bottom line
Remember, customers create the most value for you … when you create the most value for them.
Here’s the thing, social isn’t just a new way of marketing, it’s a new way of running a business or a physician’s practice (which is a business isn’t it?). Many businesses certainly have figured this out and are using social marketing and improved customer experience to rapidly grow their business.
Practices that are proactively managing all elements of their patient experiences are most successful in achieving customer loyalty.
Need some help in building better customer trust from your customer experiences? Creative ideas to help grow your customer relationships?
Call today for a FREE consultation or a FREE quote. Learn about some options to scope your job and pay for results.
All you get is what you bring to the fight. And that fight gets better every day you learn and apply new ideas to make your customer experiences better.
When things are not what you want them to be, what’s most important is your next step. Call today.
Test. Learn. Improve. Repeat.
Are you devoting enough energy to improving your continuous learning for yourself and your team?
Digital Spark Marketing will stretch your thinking and your ability to adapt to change. We also provide some fun and inspiration along the way.
More reading on customer experience from our Library:
Client Satisfaction …10 Secrets to Improve Customer Experience
Mike Schoultz is a digital marketing and customer service expert. With 48 years of business experience, he consults on and writes about topics to help improve the performance of small business. Find him on G+, Facebook, Twitter, Digital Spark Marketing, and LinkedIn.
The problem is never how to get new ideas into your mind, but how to eliminate the old ideas. Customer service designs that are remarkable get talked about.And getting talked about in this light is a great thing, right? This is especially true in many customer service myths. See what Jeanne Bliss says.
No question. So telling yourself these myths on customer experience is a big no-no and won’t take you where you want to go will they?
We often get questions and comments on delivering great customer service and experiences. From clients and customers commenting on our blog.
Many relate to customer service actions that are reminders of what we already know (but we occasionally forget). These are big enablers of customer service and experience.
They usually won’t create Wow service on their own, but their absence is noted by customers and lowers excellent customer service to just good enough or less.
Related: How Marriott Courtyard Turned Customer Failure into Service Recovery
Much of how we help people deliver better customer experience and service is with examples. These are fun and useful because we all have them (since we’re all customers.) And sometimes it helps to look at examples of things we shouldn’t say to customers.
That is if we want them to keep coming back.
So, here is my top 20 list of myths on customer service and experience not to tell yourself. They are things you should never say to a customer that we often use in client workshops:
Jeanne Bliss says … don’t follow a script
Because scripts and checklists are all the rage now, employees are scripted to death. Many feel (and some are told) they are not there to think but to follow the script. And often that’s exactly what they do, even when it makes no sense and wastes the customer’s time.
When I hear a script, I wonder if the person has the capability to help me. Not a confidence builder, is it? If you have a script or checklist, pay attention to the real world too. Your customers will thank you.
Jeanne Bliss says … don’t say not my error
Never pass the buck or blame someone else, especially if they’re part of your company. You don’t look any better or smarter by doing so.
But you certainly appear uninterested in solving the customer’s problem. Your time is better spent fixing and helping rather than blaming and finger-pointing.
Customer service roles and responsibilities.
Customer service myths … employees don’t care
If you hire people that are not delighted to be in a customer service role, to be social and servicing people, you’ll likely end up with employees that don’t care.
Nothing is worse for a customer’s experience.
Jeanne Bliss says … limited employee expertise
Putting new employees on the firing line with no or limited training results in employees who have to hand customers off or plead no knowledge. Both are equally bad. Employees that are not motivated to learn rapidly are also a bad situation waiting to happen.
Jeanne Bliss says … limited employee authority
No empowerment for employees to do the right things? You might as well build a robot to respond to customers. Nothing worse than having an employee that knows what needs to be done, but is not empowered to do it.
No consistency
As we stated in the introduction, you need to have all good and delighted customer experiences. Satisfactory and bad experiences will negate all the delighted customers talk about, simply because negative results usually get talked about more.
Need a lot of focus on the consistency of the good and delighted experiences.
Customer service myths … no interest in customer feedback
Many customers are itching to tell you how to improve. If they are not given an opportunity, it degrades the experience. Likewise, customers always feel good when they see positive improvements.
Customer service responsibilities list.
Jeanne Bliss says … no personalized engagement
Employees who rarely smile and engage socially at one on one engagement are at a very serious disadvantage in being able to create a delightful customer experience.
In the longer term, a business needs to build relationships, particularly with its best customers. Hard to do with no personalized engagement.
Customer service myths … pushy sales techniques
All selling should be off limits in any situation. Hard selling is a definite no-no for any good customer experience. Very little turns off customers much faster than pushy sales techniques.
Jeanne Bliss says … poor listeners
Two-way conversations begin with employees listening carefully before responding. Being stuck on transmit mode in a two-way conversation won’t go anywhere fast.
Poor follow through
If a customer is told X will be done, they should feel that it will happen. Hopefully faster and better than promised. If something unexpected happens, a good experience demands the customer be notified and kept informed.
Jeanne Bliss says … don’t meet expectations
If promises are not kept, expectations by the customer not achieved, negative experiences result. Too negative and your business will lose the customer forever. The absolute last thing you want.
Saying you are sorry
I am sorry you feel that way. People often say this as an apology. But it’s not. Because it again shifts the blame to the customer.
If you’re sorry, then say so. Don’t qualify it. When customers hear an apology like this, they understand what you’re doing. You’re saying, “I know I’m supposed to apologize but I don’t want to.”
Related: Crash Course on How to Apologize to a Customer
A better option is just to say “I’m sorry this happened” or simply “I’m sorry.”
It tells the customer you are sorry for the situation the customer is in without making you responsible for it.
Customer service myths … just calm down
Is there ever a situation where this has the intended effect? Not that we can see. It seems like you are tossing gasoline on the fire.
More like they’ll get even angrier while they tell YOU to calm down. They’ll escalate the matter, and they’ll probably become a former customer.
Listen, let them vent, have them talk to someone else if they want. But never tell them to calm down.
Recording: Your call is very important to us
I hear this so often I ignore it. And that is how it should be. A recorded message is not the place to tell your customers how much you value their business. Do it with a real, live, caring human being.
That’s a message your customers will believe (and respond to).
Jeanne Bliss says … admit you made a mistake
We all know customers make mistakes. Everyone makes mistakes. But when you point it out directly and blatantly, you risk offending or embarrassing your customer. How would you like it?
Jeanne says no blaming is needed. Instead, focus on helping them understand the right way to do things so that they won’t make a mistake again.
Talk to the corporate office
If a customer has feedback, a request or a complaint, they don’t care who YOU have to forward it to. They don’t care that another person in your organization will deal with it.
What they want is for YOU to take the initiative to get the ball rolling. It’s not the customer’s job to go trying to find the exact person who should handle their situation. That’s YOUR job.
Jeanne Bliss says … it’s our company policy
With too many employees this is just an easy way to get out of doing something they’d rather not do.
If you want to help then find a way. Don’t hide behind company policy. And if you can’t work around the policy, offer an alternative or escalate the matter for the customer.
Jeanne says if your customers see you are trying to help, they’ll be less disappointed even if they don’t get exactly what they want.
Customer service myths … please take a number
If I were the customer in this situation, “huh?” is the only response I’d be able to muster, assuming I didn’t just walk out. But it happens.
People get so focused on policies, procedures, systems, and rules that they forget about a little tool called “common sense.”
No one else has complained
This one always amazes me. Are we taking a survey? Are we voting on the situation? If enough other customers have a problem, then you’ll listen to me (or handle my problem)? Is that really how you want to be perceived?
Of course not, that’s ridiculous. But I’ve heard employees (and managers) say this all too often. The problem is they are focusing on their perspective. They should be focusing on the customer and helping solve a problem.
The bottom line
Remember one simple thing here: all employees need to view themselves as customer advocates, period.1Customer service actions that are remarkable get talked about.And getting talked about in this light is a great thing, right? No question.
Do you have a lesson about making your customer experience better you can share with this community? Have any questions or comments to add in the section below?
Customer engagement improvements are worth the effort.
Need some help in building better customer trust from your customer experiences? Creative ideas to help grow your customer relationships?
Call today for a FREE consultation or a FREE quote. Learn about some options to scope your job and pay for results.
Call Mike at 607-725-8240.
All you get is what you bring to the fight. And that fight gets better every day you learn and apply new ideas to make your customer experiences better.
When things are not what you want them to be, what’s most important is your next step. Call today.
Test. Learn. Improve. Repeat.
Are you devoting enough energy to improving your continuous learning for yourself and your team?
Digital Spark Marketing will stretch your thinking and your ability to adapt to change. We also provide some fun and inspiration along the way. Call us for a free quote today. You will be amazed at how reasonable we will be.
More reading on customer service and customer experience from our Library:
Mike Schoultz is a digital marketing and customer service expert. With 48 years of business experience, he consults on and writes about topics to help improve the performance of a small business. Find him on G+, Facebook, Twitter, Digital Spark Marketing, and LinkedIn.
