As healthcare administrators know, HCAHPS is a comparative database to which they are reporting many different pieces of information about hospital performance, including customer service and patient satisfaction indicators. Essentially, any individual with web access (i.e., any current or prospective customer) can go to the internet and compare your organization side-by-side with other local hospitals. It’s a scary thought to have that kind of comparative information readily available to your customers, when you have no control over what’s displayed or how it’s displayed.
When organizations have issues in the patient satisfaction or customer service indicators, they immediately think of the need to do scripting with nurses or rounding on the floors, or training for personnel. And while these might all be appropriate actions to take, these are typically only a part of a strategic action plan. If you want to make adjustments and improvements in customer service and patient satisfaction performance, at some point you need to have a strategy behind it. Most hospitals have marketing strategies. They have advertising strategies. They do detailed planning when opening up a new wing or building a new patient tower. But how many of them have a customer service strategy?
An effective customer service strategy focuses on the customer experience, service delivery, the corporate culture, and metrics to measure all of those components. It focuses on management’s role in preaching and modeling the types of behaviors that lead to high levels of customer and patient satisfaction. It has tactics listed out in a Gantt Chart format over time that helps to change the culture, get more focused on the patient, and specifically help employees to know what to do right and how to stop doing what’s causing problems.
If you want long-term success in your organization in the areas of customer service and patient satisfaction, develop, commit to, and execute a Customer Service Strategy.
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