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Narrow Your Focus to Seek Excellence - 4/1/25


You’ve probably heard companies use phrases such as: “We want to go from being good to great.”  Maybe they’ve said: “We strive for perfection, and although we’ll never reach perfection, maybe we can achieve excellence along the way.” These organizations find some kind of a catch phrase or slogan, but Read more

Avoid the Unfriendly Ghost - 3/25/25


Last week we talked about the qualities of “PERKI Customer Service,” essentially what attitudes and actions are characteristics of those who provide great customer service.  This week, let’s take the opposite approach.  What are some of the mistakes that people make?  Maybe these are mistakes of omission or commission; Read more

PERKI Customer Service - 3/18/25


After having worked on hundreds of projects over the years with thousands of thousands of individuals, some things become pretty clear. There are certain traits held by people who are great in customer service.  Look at this list, and do a self-assessment.  Which apply to you? Positive and Patient Do you Read more

It Helps to Downshift - 3/11/25


One of the first tips I heard when I was learning how to drive related to what to do when the brakes fail - downshift.  Shifting into a lower gear can slow down a moving vehicle.  I would explain this in technical terms to you, but considering I’m not Read more

Patience is… - 3/4/25


Patience is a…pain in the neck.  Why is it so hard to be patient?  Those of us who work in customer service know that we constantly have to show patience with our customers.  We’re ready to move to the next step or the solution because we’ve heard this issue Read more

Everybody Doesn’t - 2/25/25


Joey received the compliment, but he was confused.  Paula, his boss, and Joey had their monthly one-on-one meeting, and Paula noted that, although he was new, Joey was already doing a great job!  While there were learning curves on some of the organizational policies and the technology that he Read more

A Simple Phrase to Transform Your Customer Feedback Approach - 2/18/25


I went to a restaurant called Big Ed’s (no relation) in Raleigh, NC recently.  It’s basically country cooking with fantastic breakfast options!  On the menu there was a quote that said: If you enjoyed your meal, tell a friend.  If not, please tell us. That was an excellent statement that embodies Read more

What Phones and Football Have in Common - 2/11/25


Congratulations!  You made it through weeks/months of hype for football’s Super Bowl!  You made it through hundreds of pregame shows and podcasts, endless debates on things endlessly inconsequential, 10 hours of pre-game shows on Sunday, what seems like 100 commercials designed specifically for the “Big Game,” and the longest Read more

Create Awareness of Alternatives - 2/4/25


Sandy was hungry, and she was on the move.  Driving between meetings, she saw the restaurant sign and pulled in.  The fast-food restaurant had two drive-thru lanes.  One was for any customer who wanted to place an order on the spot. The other was for mobile orders only.  The Read more

Listen with Your Eyes - 1/28/25


Out of the corner of his eye, Patrick saw the customer enter the lobby.  The customer was carrying a large shoulder bag with several papers in her hand.  The customer was shuffling the papers and looking down; then she stopped, looked up, and saw the staff navigator sitting at Read more

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Learn from the Operating Room

Posted on January 13, 2010 in Business Advice, Healthcare Please leave a comment

Andrea Hernandez at ledger-enquirer.com documented the steps taken by Susan Garrett, a Georgia Hospital Heroes Award winner who helped to improve patient satisfaction at her hospital. Ms. Garrett focused on four areas to improve patient satisfaction:

1. Communication with the families

2. Pre-operative education

3. Improving patient IV starts

4. Communication regarding unexpected delays.

Those four areas can be generalized to any business. If you want to improve customer satisfaction, improve customer communications. Be open, responsive, proactive with customers, addressing their questions, quickly handling issues, and anticipating needs.

Second, pre-operative education can be generalized to any business. Think of it as making your customers educated on what’s going to happen – what they need to do or what you’ll be doing. You’re setting expectations. Anything that can set expectations can improve satisfaction and reduce complaints.

Third, improving IV starts – now how do you generalize that? Think of that in terms of doing things right the first time with the customer. Make it as painless an experience as possible to do business with you.

Finally, communicate about unexpected delays. Don’t wait for the customer to complain. If you anticipate delays, address them proactively and restate a more realistic expectation.

Learn ways to improve your customer satisfaction by applying these hospital tips.

Interested in improving your company’s customer service? See more information at: http://www.cssamerica.com/


Don’t Wait on Fixing Waits

Posted on December 10, 2009 in Business Advice, Healthcare Please leave a comment

Where do you hear the loudest customer complaints in the typical hospital of today? It’s the Emergency Room.

“Why have I waited so long?!” “Why did that person on the stretcher go back to a room before me?! I was here first!” “I’ve been here 2 hours, and nobody’s told me anything!”

These complaints are pervasive, but they also point to the impact of customer service. Remember that customer service involves processes. Customer service is part employee attitudes/skills/knowledge, and the other part is process. How long something takes, how long are the waits, how efficient is a process, how redundant are the processes, how smooth the flow of information and people is or isn’t – those are all characteristics of process.

And whereas businesses spend lots of money every year to have employees trained on how to deal with irate customers, a tactic just as valuable as that is to identify the root causes of why customers are irate and to address those root causes. In healthcare, so many of those complaints are about one thing – process.

So if you want your organization to be better from a customer service-perspective in your customers’ eyes, if you want to reduce the number of conflicts with customers which your employees have to address, then fix your processes. Find out where waits exist, the cause of the waits, the communications during the waits, and perceptions of the length of the wait time, and address them.

Many of our clients redesign departmental layouts, they change processes, they do a better job of scheduling staff to flex up/down with variations by time-of-day or day-of-week with customer volumes or arrival rates. They train staff on how to and how often to interact with customers during wait to provide updates, keep them engaged, convey they care, and – ultimately – to reduce the perception of the wait time. The clients create activities for the customers or distractions which help to reduce the perception of the wait times.

In other words, the hospitals and other organizations best at dealing with waits try to reduce wait times while at the same time reducing the perception of waits.

Wait times are a symptom of an issue with your customer service. Don’t wait on fixing waits.

Interested in improving your company’s customer service? See more information at: http://www.cssamerica.com/


Everyone is a Customer Service Representative

Posted on October 22, 2009 in Business Advice, Healthcare 1 Comment

This wish applies to any business, but let’s focus this wish on the healthcare providers of the world.

If I could wish one thing for any hospital that would improve its patient satisfaction, it would be this. I would wish that every person — food service worker, physician, nurse, administrator, CNA, physical therapist, unit manager, unit secretary, human resources manager, business office clerk, environmental services employee, volunteer — view themselves as a customer service representative.

Every individual noted above has their technical or clinical or financial or other professional responsibility. But, in healthcare, as with other service industries, part of that technical or clinical or financial or other professional responsibility involves communicating with others. It involves face-to-face communications, it involves telephone conferences, it involves e-mails being sent. Part of that responsibility includes communications with co-workers or communications with vendors or patients or family members or physicians or other guests.

That communication conveys something. It conveys that you care about the individual as a person, or you don’t. It conveys that you are focused on the person more than the task, or you’re not. It conveys that you’re responsive and “other focused,” or it conveys that you’re slow to respond and “me focused.”  It conveys that you understand the “care” part of healthcare as opposed to the technical or clinical or financial aspect of the task being the only thing of importance.

Imagine a hospital where every person you walked by, every person you spoke with on the phone, every person you communicated with via an e-mail treated you like you were special. Whether you are a co-worker or the visitor or the patient, you felt special.  You felt like these people wanted to help you, and caring for your health or your other needs were simply the methods that they used to care for you as a person.

Imagine having this culture where all hospital personnel truly understood how they themselves were customer service representatives. If you can imagine this, it is easy to imagine patient satisfaction scores going through the roof.

Interested in improving your company’s customer service?  See more information at:  http://www.cssamerica.com/


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