BUILDING RELATIONSHIPS: A Customer Service Skill

In previous posts, I defined who your customer really is and explained the most basic need of customers. As a follow up, it is important you know that there are certain skills required by management and employees that will enable you render excellent customer service.

Much like a surgeon needs the right skills and tools to perform a successful surgery, every hospital employee will need to acquire the necessary skills to satisfy the customer. One of such skills is the ability to build relationships; with co-workers and patients.

Courtesy: Lucas

I had stated in another previous post that one of the elements of  medical services is ‘inseparability’. That means you cannot render service without coming into personal contact with the patient (at least in most cases). As a result, medical employees need to learn, acquire, or develop the skills necessary for building relationships.

Building relationships means getting to know your patients as people; seeing them as real people and not just as medical cases. The better you get to know them, the better you can help them. Developing relationships builds patients trust in you. Here are a few tips:

1.     Be Nice and Friendly

The first step to building relationships is to be nice to patients and their relatives. This begins with knowing the names of your patients. Patients have names and it is always nice if you call them by their names instead of referring to them as “madam” or “the man with the red cap”. In addition, learn to correctly pronounce their names. Their name is the sweetest sound to them when correctly pronounced. Knowing their name gives them a feeling of importance and makes them know that you genuinely care enough to know them.  

2.     Smile Always

It is also important that you always have a smile on your face when dealing with patients. A friendly smile is often reassuring and relaxing to patients. When they are relaxed, it becomes easier to get information from them.

3.     Listen

The next key to building relationships is listening. Listening is a skill on its own. Please resist the temptation to dismiss the patient before they even get to the kernel of their complaint. I know how difficult it is to listen to a patient blabbing away when you have a busy clinic. But you should do all in your power to steer the patient towards the important facts while maintaining a listening ear. Things to do while listening are making eye contact when patients are speaking, nodding to encourage them to speak more, asking questions to clarify certain points and repeating certain aspects of their conversation. (I hope to write extensively on how to be a good listener in a future post).

4.     Pay Compliments

We all want to hear how nice we are, how lovely our dress is and how smart we work. It is the same with patients. Learn to give honest and sincere compliments like “You are doing a good job with your diet plan” or “thanks for coming promptly for your appointment”. Don’t criticize, condemn or complain about them.

5.     Small Talk

During downtime, indulge in small talk with patients, their relatives and friends. Let them see your ‘human’ side, your ‘informal’ side. Avoid being serious and business-like all the time. When you talk, talk in the terms of the other person’s interest. Let it be clear that you genuinely care.

6.     Bedside Manner

Finally, adopt a congenial bedside manner. This means being pleasant and responsive to the needs of your patients.

In conclusion, building relationships with patients will ultimately affect your profit margin, positively.

 See you soon….

What do Patients Need?

Many physicians have asked this question countless times in exasperation. What do patients need?! It seems when you’re nice to patients, they take you for granted and call you at odd hours for the most trivial of issues. Conversely, when you are not so nice, they call you a snob.

What do patients really need? Can you ever please them? Do they need treatment in the form of drugs, counseling, surgery, physiotherapy, or a combination of all these? Or is there something deeper that they need?

I usually tell physicians that the most basic need of any customer/patient is EMPATHETIC HELP! You certainly cannot cater to their every want but you will do well to offer them emphatic help.

Image Courtesy: www.fotosearch.com

Usually, patients cannot do much for themselves. When they come to the hospital, they often feel like crap and cannot make themselves better. This helplessness may be physical, mental or emotional. My little daughter’s dictionary says to help is ‘to make it easier for someone to do something, by doing part of their work or by giving them advice or an object they need’.

Empathy means the ability to identify with and understand somebody else’s feelings or difficulties.

Empathetic help therefore means the ability to do something, give something or give advice from a point of understanding to a patient. For example, when a patient comes in vomiting all over the couch, empathetic help means providing relief and cleaning up without being rude or impolite. It also means a woman who is in labor is not screamed at or slapped on the laps. Rather counseling and some form of acceptable pain relief is offered. In addition, empathetic help means putting yourself in the patient’s shoes and giving the treatment and attention you would expect to receive if you were a patient.

The components of empathetic help are:

—  Friendliness:

The act of being nice to patients and being receptive to their queries

—  Understanding:

This is having the right attitude towards patients based on your ability to interpret or infer their feelings.

—  Fairness:

This means providing a balanced and impartial service to patients regardless of their gender, color, creed, ethnicity, religion or political leaning.

—  Confidentiality:

This means not divulging the patient’s medical history or condition to unauthorized persons.

—  Information:

This involves providing facts and data about the patient’s condition in terms they can understand so that they can make informed choices.

—  Control:

This is allowing patients or their guardians to make informed decisions at each point in their treatment process.

—  Options & Alternatives:

This implies providing equally beneficial treatment choices to patients as well as directing patients to another service provider when you cannot manage their specific health issues.

Beyond the aesthetics and facilities of your hospital, empathetic help is a culture that your hospital must imbibe. To remain competitive, you should learn it and train your staff to give it.

So, when next you get exasperated by your patients and wonder what they actually need, read through this article. That way you can keep on providing quality healthcare with a smile.

Cheers!

Who Are Your Customers?

There are two basic questions I always ask in my Customer Care Training Workshops. The first is “who are your customers”? I get various responses like; “my customers are my patients”, or “customers are those who buy services from us”. Then I ask the next question, “who is a consumer”? At this stage, a lot of people get stumped and ask “aren’t they the same”? Well, not really.

Your customer is someone who purchases a product (a service or a good) from you. The customer may not necessarily purchase the product for personal use or satisfaction.  A customer is also a person with whom you have dealings. A consumer on the other hand, is a person who actually uses your product and derives personal satisfaction from it.

In this context, a customer could be a Medical Insurance Company or a Health Management Organization (HMO) that purchases health insurance for a group of employees. The employees are the consumers. A customer could also be a parent who pays the dentist to do scaling and polishing for his daughter. In this case, the daughter is the consumer and the parent is the customer. A person who presents in the ER and pays for his treatment is both a customer and a consumer.

You must ensure you identify both the customer and the consumer in each case and provide the service that each needs. The consumer needs good health, while the customer expects value for money. Satisfying both is always a delicate balancing act. This is especially true with regard to Medical Insurance Companies and HMOs. Excellent service involves satisfying both the customer and the consumer.  However, the ultimate person is the consumer, who is the patient.

To satisfy the consumer, you need to understand the concept of the customer chain. But first, let us consider the various classes of customers encountered in a typical hospital:

• —  External Customers
• Internal Customers
• Corporate Customers
• Regulatory Customers

The external customers come from outside the hospital environment. They are the most important component in the customer chain. The external customer includes the patient, his/her relatives and friends. They require the services of the hospital. External customers can be both customers (purchase the service) and consumers (derive personal satisfaction from using the service).

The internal customers come from within the hospital environment. They include doctors, pharmacists, hospital administrators etc. They require the service of another service provider to perform their own duties. Internal customers are mainly consumers. They use/consume the services of others.

Corporate customers are also from the external environment. They differ from external customers because they do not consume hospital services. Rather, they provide service to the hospital. Examples are suppliers, pharmaceutical company sales reps, waste disposal companies etc. Without your corporate customers, you may not be able to meet the needs of your external customers.

Finally, the regulatory bodies monitor the activities of the hospital to ensure minimum standards of healthcare quality are met.

The Customer Chain

These different types of customers form a chain called the customer chain. The chain begins when the corporate customers supply drugs, consumables and other services to the hospital. The quality of service received from the corporate customers influences the quality of service the hospital will provide to its other classes of customers.

The customer chain continues when the external customer/consumer/patient requires treatment and presents at the hospital. The internal customers then ‘processes’ the patient through the hospital system.

For example, the front desk provides a service to the doctor by pulling out the relevant documents pertaining to the particular patient. The doctor also requires the service of the laboratory scientist to aid the diagnosis. He in turn provides service to the laboratory by requesting for the right investigation. The nurse is expected to carry out the instructions of the doctors.

The regulators ensure that all that takes place is acceptable and legal. The chain goes on to the last point of service the patient comes across before exiting the hospital.

If one person in this chain does a shoddy job, the customer leaves with an unsatisfactory service. A break in this chain leads to poor service. Shoddiness can result from misdiagnosis, wrong tests results, expired drugs, poorly filled prescriptions e.t.c.

Excellent customer service therefore begins from identifying your customers and consumers; ensuring each member of the medical team understands the customer chain and their position in it; and encouraging everyone to give their best at their respective work stations.

See you soon…..

Beyond Aesthetics: Campus Sheraton

I initially planned to title this post “Does Your Hospital Have Aesthetic Value?”. But after some careful thought I decided to title it “Beyond Aesthetics”. This is because I have discovered that a lot of hospitals are stepping up their look in terms of modern designs and buildings. This is especially so in the urban areas. Many though, in rural and semi-urban areas are still living in the past, providing services from dilapidated structures and unkempt premises.

I have always believed that a hospital building should be trendy (forgive me, I am still under 45), have wide corridors, neat and air-conditioned rooms, shiny floors, sparkling clean bathrooms, a pleasant fragrance, comfortable furniture, adequate lighting, spectacular landscape, an imposing signpost, functional ambulances, smartly dressed staff, state of the art facilities etc. This sounds like a five-star hotel. Well, I think the modern hospital should be a five star hotel and even more.

Back in school, we had a cafeteria complex that catered to the culinary needs of the entire campus. There were about 12 separate canteens called ‘Buka’ 1- ‘Buka’ 12. Sometime in my 4^th or 5^th year, Buka 1 was taken-over and became known as ‘Campus Sheraton’. The new management transformed the dingy lit canteen to a five-star hotspot. The furniture was changed to a more comfortable one; the exterior was re-designed, the interior was re-decorated and air-conditioned. But most importantly, the menu and service were drastically changed from what the other cafeterias were providing. The management employed waitresses who were smartly dressed, friendly and courteous. My wife and I still reminisce on those good old days as students when we went ‘tearing’ turkey wings, eating fried rice and drinking chilled coke at Campus Sheraton; all at the expense of our parents! The place sure wasn't cheap but the service and food was spectacular.

That is what ‘Beyond Aesthetics’ means; going beyond mere external beauty to provide profitable quality. While it is necessary to improve the outlook of our facilities, the focus should be more on provision of quality service at all times. The aim of every infrastructural project should be to enhance the experience of the patient and improve patient outcome. A beautiful building will attract patients but only consistent quality service will keep the patients.

There are several dimensions of quality which must be regularly assessed to determine how well you are doing on the quality scale. These are:

• ·        Timeliness
• ·        Completion
• ·        Courtesy
• ·        Accuracy
• ·        Mistakes

The time dimension of quality emphasizes promptness of service to patients. Patients should not be delayed unduly and adequate measures should be put in place to reduce patients waiting time to the barest minimum.

 Quality also means each task in the hospital process is properly completed. An incomplete or poorly performed task could affect the performance of the next task in the sequence.

Another quality dimension that must be regularly assessed is courtesy. Measures and standards of behavior should be set for hospital employees at employment, induction and at regular intervals during the period of their employment. It is unacceptable for hospital workers to be rude to patients whose basic need is emphatic help.

Accuracy is a dimension of quality that relates with hitting the mark in patient care. The incidences of misdiagnosis should be rare and far between.

Finally, mistakes should be avoided. Hospital managers should design measures to prevent mistakes e.g. use of checklists, adequate planning of duty rosters, putting name bands and marking surgical sites on patients going for surgery e.t.c.

These measures will improve quality and reduce litigation. In addition, ensuring quality service helps you move beyond aesthetics to actual profitability.

See you soon…..

3 Levels of the Hospital Product

Every business organization produces goods and/or services to customers who are willing and able to purchase them. This good/service is referred to as a product. The hospital is no different. It also produces services to sick people. There are three levels or dimensions of the hospital product.

• —  Core product

This is the fundamental or basic service that a patient is really buying(good health). This product (Good health) is encapsulated in the form of consultation, investigations, and drugs. The quality of your service is a major determinant of the level of patient patronage that you will receive. For example, patients who have experienced better service elsewhere are unlikely to be satisfied if your services are below their expectations. The least they will accept from you is the level of service they have been used to. 

The quality of your core product is actually determined by the level of expertise or skills in your hospital. This can also be referred to as your core competence. If you are very skilled in general surgery, you will definitely give better surgical services than another doctor who is less skilled (all other things being equal). 

To develop your core product, you must develop yourself and your employees through training and re-training. A serious physician for example, will always be willing to learn new and better methods of treating patients. 

• —  Augmented product:

 It is not enough to be a very skilled practitioner. To attract and retain patients, you need much more than just core competence. This is where augmented product comes in. An augmented product goes beyond the level of the core product to meet and exceed customer expectation. For instance, the furnishing in the wards, the comfort and luxury of your facilities, the availability of basic utilities all play a part in augmenting your core competence. 

There are several facilities or extra features you can add to your core product to enhance your services. These include a decent room, a reception hall with health magazines/ fresh flowers/satellite TV, smartly dressed and polite staff, air conditioning e.t.c. This level of service can meet and exceed customer’s expectations. Achieving the level of the augmented product will retain customers in the short and medium term.

• —  Excellent product: 

This is a product that consistently delivers the “WOW” factor! This level sets your hospital apart from other hospitals placing you in a class of your own. It is like flying first class when others are flying economy.

An excellent hospital product builds on the level of the core and augmented products to deliver a high level of skills and world class diagnostic facilities. In this case, there is a consistent and constant strive to exceed customers’ expectations.
This can be achieved through innovation and continuous improvement. When you deliver excellent products, you are on your way to being the industry leader.

What is a Service-Oriented Hospital?

Last Sunday, my wife and I went to see a 12 year old secondary school student at a hospital in our city. He had been involved in a motor accident along with over 28 other students. They were going for an excursion when a trailer rammed into their bus. The students sustained varying degrees of injury with one reported death.

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On getting to the hospital, a scene of utter chaos met us. Relatives and friends were milling all over the premises. The entrance to the main emergency ward was securely locked by stern faced and absolutely rude security officers. The nurses and doctors going in and out of the place were even ruder. There was no one to calm down agitated relatives. There was no waiting area for parents to stay. Parents were absolutely at sea as to what was happening to their children.

Ironically, there was a sign close by that read something like:

‘We are a Service Oriented Hospital. You have the right to be served right. We are here to serve you right’

That got me thinking. What really is a Service Oriented Hospital? Is it a hospital that proclaims it is? Or is it a hospital that focuses on treating patients without being nice to them? Is it a hospital that says one thing and does another?

 In the scenario above, the hospital was faced with a crisis situation and needed to act fast to save lives. (I have often seen sympathizers, "empathizers" and onlookers who come to the hospital and make things worse for both patients and personnel). But was there no better way of handling agitated relatives? Where was the Public Relations Officer? Did hospital personnel have to be rude and hostile to relatives in order to do their jobs effectively? What does it take to be service oriented?

The example that readily comes to mind is a 5-star hotel. A Professor of Production Management once commented that the skills needed to run a hotel are similar to the skills needed to run a hospital. Indeed, a hospital can be likened to a hotel because it provides lodging, feeding and other conveniences for admitted patients. But a hospital provides much more. It also functions like a manufacturing firm because production takes place in the hospital. The production in the hospital involves the process of transforming a patient into a healthy person through the input of drugs and skills. A hospital is also similar to an educational institution. This is fairly obvious because like in a school, knowledge is transferred on a daily basis in the hospital; from the doctor to the nurse, doctor to a fellow doctor, pharmacist to the doctor e.t.c.

So, back to the question: What is a service oriented hospital? A service oriented hospital is one that has service to clients as its primary focus. It is a hospital where the perception of good, courteous, efficient and effective service is an established culture. Having this perception of service delivery could just be the key to changing the present unfriendly attitude of many hospital personnel to a more welcoming, understanding and supportive one. Attitude can be modified and changed through education and training.

A service oriented hospital must recognize the following 5 things:

1.     The hospital must recognize that its core product is good health and it should do all within its power to provide good health to clients. The hospital product is largely intangible i.e. good health cannot be seen, tasted, felt, heard or smelt before purchase. A customer shopping for a car can see the car and even test-drive it before purchase, but a patient cannot do either when purchasing health. The patient does not know how he/she will feel after you provide service to him/her. He/she comes to you with a high level of trust. Providing shabby service is an abuse of that trust. A service oriented hospital must therefore create tangible evidence that will provide information about its product and transmit confidence to the patient. Tangible evidence could be the hospital environment, staff dressing, availability of standard facilities and availability of hospital consumables etc

2.     A service oriented hospital must also recognize that there is a close proximity between workers and clients. This element means hospital service is usually inseparable i.e. both the service provider and client must be present before service can occur. It is near impossible to take a history, examine, investigate and treat a patient without his/her physical presence. A service oriented hospital must therefore ensure that the conduct, attitude, appearance and level of skill of the service provider (doctor, nurse, laboratory scientist, and pharmacist e.t.c) must be at an optimal level at all times.

3.     Thirdly, the hospital must know that it is easy for clients to detect human frailties. As a result of the close proximity between workers and clients during service delivery, it is easy for clients to detect when employees are tired, bored, upset or angry. This can affect client perception of treatment quality. This is the element of Variability. Services could become variable because of different skill levels, and varying emotional dispensation of personnel. In spite of this variability, providers should always strive to reduce variability. The emphasis should be on consistency in service delivery. A service oriented hospital can achieve this by training personnel on handling stressful situations, ensuring personnel are not overworked and identifying personnel that may require psychological help.

4.     The hospital must be aware that unused services cannot be stored. This means hospital services are Perishable. A manufacturing firm can store products until they are sold but a hospital cannot store bed space. The lost revenue from unoccupied beds cannot be recovered the following day. A service oriented hospital is one that has maximal use of resources as a goal. Efficiency and effectiveness are necessary watchwords in all service oriented organizations.

5.     Finally, a service oriented hospital must recognize that most patients expect the result of service to be immediate or at least expect immediate attention (Urgency). A service oriented hospital is one that is timely in its response to patients. Not one that keeps patients waiting for hours before they can access care. Timeliness is also necessary in dissemination of information to concerned relatives. The nature of healthcare calls for a very small margin of error. A service oriented hospital will ensure personnel display a high level of skill and professionalism at all times.

To make your hospital a service oriented one, you must understand the basic principles of service organizations outlined above. You must also educate your employees about those elements of your service that should always be addressed. They are intangibility, inseparability, variability, “perishability” and urgency.

Using the story above, a truly service oriented hospital should have kept relatives in a proper waiting area. They should have also given regular treatment updates to parents. Finally, the healthcare providers should have being more courteous and supportive.

In my next post, I will be looking at the dimensions/levels of the hospital product. See you soon.

10 CUSTOMER CARE TIPS THAT EVERY DOCTOR SHOULD KNOW

 Good customer service is indisputably the hallmark of any successful business. Here are 10 tips that you should know and apply in your daily practice. They will ensure customer satisfaction.

1.      Greet the patient with a smile
It is important to be the first to say "hello" to the patient. And do that with a “welcoming and reassuring smile”. Remember that patients usually come with a lot of psychological and physical pain. Your smile will be reassuring and will put the patient at ease. It is also useful to greet the patient by name. A quick glance at the patient's folder before the patient walks in will give you the name. Don’t just sit at your desk staring sternly at the patient. Your smile can make the patient feel comfortable.

2.      Be courteous and polite always
We all want to be treated nicely. We all want to be treated with respect. Patients desire the same thing. Being courteous means showing good manners and respect for the feelings of others. When you are courteous, you will listen to the patient and make him/her feel wanted. Let the patient-experience in your facility be a pleasant one always (even when you are physically tired). Someone once told me “you only get one chance to make a first impression. Use it wisely!”

3.      Solve their problems
Patients come to you basically because they have health problems. Please solve THEIR problems. Not the ones you think they have but the problems they actually have. Please read that again. This means listening intently, taking a good history and making the right diagnosis. When you meet their needs by solving their problems, they will come back to you when they have another problem. If you can’t solve their problems, by all means direct them to someone else who can. You must know your area of core competence and refer patients whom you can’t treat. That is good customer care.


4.      Give alternatives
One secret of companies with good customer care is the ability to refrain from saying “NO”. Instead of telling patients a flat “no”, learn to give alternatives.In addition, make the alternative look as good as the original request. It reduces the feeling of rejection and makes patients feel respected. For example, if a patient wants the executive room upstairs and it isn't available, don’t say “no, you can’t have that room”. Rather say “that room is not available now but the room next to it is also comfortable. Moreover, you may be discharged in a few days.”

5.      Deliver prompt services
Do you like waiting in line in the bank or at a coffee shop? I guess not. Learn to deliver prompt services. It is rude to keep people waiting without justification. To reduce patients’ waiting time in your facility, you must find and eliminate the bottleneck in your hospital process.(more about the bottleneck later).

6.      Ensure quality in your hospital process 
Talking about the hospital process, you must ensure quality in the flow of your patients from one workstation to another. To do this, you must have a workable plan in place and good control measures to handle deviations. Quality also means continuous improvement of little things. It is those little things you overlook that will add up to enhance customer satisfaction.

7.      Train your employees
You cannot blame a man you have not trained. Organize training sessions on customer care for your employees. Also develop an organizational culture of excellence. They will imbibe this culture and treat your patients well.

8.      Treat your employees well 
Your employees have the most contact with your patients. They are very important variables in the customer care equation. In addition to training them, you need to pay them fairly and treat them with dignity. They in turn, will be nice to your patients.

9.      Ensure patients confidentiality
Some years back, I discovered a nurse and ward attendant discussing a patient’s case in the hospital reception. It was a hot afternoon and the place seemed empty. Little did they know that the patient’s husband was listening to their conversation! It was a disaster to say the least. The man took his wife away and never returned. In addition, the bad publicity from that incidence took months to manage. Need I say more? Patient confidentiality is a vital part of excellent customer service.

10.  Lead by example
Finally, lead by example. If you are nice and courteous to your patients, your staff will do likewise. But if you are rude and disrespectful to patients, expect the same thing from your personnel.

Applying these tips will ensure you stay ahead of the pack!
See you soon!

IS CUSTOMER CARE NECESSARY IN AFRICAN HOSPITALS? II

TO TRAIN OR NOT TO TRAIN?

A critical question in customer care is whether to train or not to train. Is it cost-effective to train hospital personnel on customer service? Is it even necessary? What will it add to their medical skills? This question is more pertinent in private practice where the labor turnover is very high and financial resources quite thin. 

Sometime in 2013, at the Summit of all Federal Chief Medical Directors (CMDs) in Jos, Plat eau State, Nigeria, the representative of the Nigerian Honorable Minister for Health spoke extensively on the need for hospitals to train their personnel.

As he spoke, it dawned on me that an untrained hospital personnel is like an untrained driver behind the wheels of a brand new Ferrari. That is a recipe for disaster. What is the point of having a "five-star" facility without training your staff on how to handle customers? Or, why purchase an incubator for your pediatric unit when no one has received training on its use?

Customer care training will ensure that patients are treated with dignity and respect whenever they visit your facility. This will improve hospital-patient relations and lead to repeat "purchases" of your services. It is generally acknowledged in Business that organizations survive and grow on repeat business rather than new business. Good customer care among other things, will also help to convert new business into repeat business.

Hospital personnel should be trained routinely and regularly on the use of modern equipment, records keeping, current medical trends, customer care etc. You can contact healthcare training or management consultancy agencies in your area.