A few weeks ago, our six year-old daughter was experiencing what we believed were seasonal allergies. Her symptoms weren't serious enough for an ER visit, so we took her to the Minute Clinic at the local CVS Pharmacy. The wait was short and the service was good. What impressed me was their follow up.

Within a few days, my daughter received a hand written note card from the nurse. It read..."Hi Jordan, I hope you are feeling better. Have a great time in 1st grade!" It was personally signed by the nurse.

Did she have to send that note? No. Will we go back to that clinic because of that note? You bet. Nothing replaces the power of customer service. I'm a firm believer in the power of personal note cards, and when you get one from an unexpected source, there is an immediate feeling of loyalty.

What can we do to continue to personalize the healthcare experience? Simply show we care. Let's send notes to our patients or make that quick follow-up call. That's how long-term relationships are built.

With the Emergency Department frequently the gateway to the rest of the hospital, it is essential to improve patient satisfaction in the ED. Successful programs cited by Press Ganey include hiring dedicated staff to improve communications about delays.

This made me think. Patient satisfaction in the ED is not dissimilar from patient satisfaction in other healthcare encounters. Patients want to know what to expect, they want to be treated with dignity, and above all they want constant and reliable communication. Is your organization consistently meeting the needs of your ED patients?

Some healthcare organizations use a customer care approach by calling patients after their ED visit to measure satisfaction and overall patient experience with the ED. Mystery shoppers are another way to test whether an organization is delivering a high level of service at all customer touch-points. The Beryl Institute’s newest white paper is on the rather provocative topic of Mystery Shopping the Patient Experience (register to download) and how some hospitals are using mystery shoppers to improve customer communication and satisfaction.

What are you doing to ensure customer service in your ED? …In your waiting rooms? …At your switchboard? And how is this translating into better customer satisfaction? I’d like to know what’s working in your organization.

Google is developing partnerships with hospitals, clinics, pharmacies and medical-test providers so users can keep all of their medical information at one Web site – Googles! The Cleveland Clinic, Walgreens and CVS Caremark have already signed on as partners. HealthGrades’ quality and cost information on doctors and hospitals will also be available on the site.

Google’s new tool has a “virtual” pillbox to send medication alerts to cell phones. And, consumers can link a heart monitor to Google Health and feed statistics to an online heart attack assessment service.

How can you compete? Now, more than ever, hospitals need to assess all of their customer touch points. They need to make sure that each of these moments of truth – when you have the opportunity to interact with a customer – are strengthening the hospital/patient relationship. If not, you risk losing patients, not to the hospital down the street – but to the corporation online.

Let me know what you think about these new services.

The consumer-oriented website http://www.angieslist.com/ has just unveiled a new healthcare ratings category. Patients are able to share their experiences about doctors, dentists, hospitals, pharmacies and health insurance providers. Now doctors, hospitals and other providers will be subject to the same scrutiny and commentary as plumbers, electricians, and moving companies.

Consumers merely have to pay a membership fee and can immediately begin rating a physician’s bedside manner and professionalism, or a hospital’s price, quality, and responsiveness. And these ratings include simple to understand grades – ranging from A to F.

Unlike other rating systems, administered by governmental agencies using commonly agreed upon measurement tools or ratings based upon publicly available data, this feedback will be totally subjective and consumer driven. And the feedback can be based on the experience of one patient – rather than data aggregated across many encounters.

Are our institutions and processes ready for this kind of consumer scrutiny? Probably not. How can we get ready? I think we will need to increase our dialogue with consumers and ask on a regular and systematic basis "how we are doing?" and not just focus on the clinical answer. This process will need to go well beyond traditional patient satisfaction surveys and outcomes data – and may include regular follow-up phone calls and even mystery shopping, a practice more commonly found in department stores and restaurants. What are you doing to get ready?

Is your hospital the best hospital that a customer can imagine? The worst? Now, this information is no longer something discussed behind the scenes in hospital marketing departments or in physician changing areas. With the release of HCAHPS, consumers will be able to see how likely patients are to recommend your hospital or to recommend the competition. More compelling is the fact that this data will be used in part to determine hospital reimbursement for services.

And, the important thing is that these recommendations won’t be based solely on clinical outcomes. A friend of mine recently had cancer surgery. The surgery was very successful, but he didn’t focus on the excellence of his physician or the clinical outcomes. Instead, he complained bitterly about the hospital’s lack of responsiveness to his needs. He couldn’t get water - the nurse didn’t come when he needed her, and on and on. So, despite having had remarkable clinical results, he rated the hospital well below average.

What are the implications of this story? If we don’t deliver excellent clinical outcomes, we won’t be in business. Customers expect that from every hospital. But, if we don’t focus on customer service, and make that a priority, customers will realize they have a choice and look elsewhere.

Have you checked out how your patients viewed their hospital experience? Let me know the impact of HCAHPS on your organization, and how you are planning to address the issues identified.

The popular restaurant guide has teamed up with Wellpoint to offer commentary on physicians. Tellingly, these new ratings will not be based on cost or quality but will center on the customer experience including trust, communications, availability and the office environment. As Wellpoint explains, the categories are “solely designed to reflect a consumer’s experience with a physician and not to reflect the quality of care they received.”

This guide will elevate doctor’s caring to the same level as the doctor’s care. Physicians, who are assumed to deliver high quality outcomes, will now be expected to do so in an accessible and customer-focused environment.

This is a novel approach for health care. While ratings abound in today’s highly competitive marketplace, they typically focus on quality. And it is normally difficult to get information on an individual physician’s performance let alone his/her personality.

With this new Zagat book, physician ratings will be easy accessible to most consumers. And the ratings will move away from standardized reports to focus instead on the self-reported customer experience. To buyers who rely on blogs and customer’s ratings to purchase everything from books to stoves, this approach will intuitively make sense.

I have long believed that customer service is the key differentiator in health care. And now, customers will have the chance to evaluate service without any intermediaries. Bringing this concept to healthcare is a novel and welcome innovation.

As the Wall Street Journal noted in a recent issue, CareerBuilder.com kicked off a national ad campaign during the Super Bowl. Given that they worked with the ad agency of Nike and Coke, the ad cut through the clutter of Super Bowl ads. The more important issue is what happened the next day, when CareerBuilder flashed the tough-love message as workers moved through their day. Signs commuters saw on their way to and from work had messages like, “If you don't like your job then maybe you should get another job."

So, what can we do in healthcare to make sure that our organizations remain good places to work? HCA fielded a ground-breaking study to determine the characteristics of high performing hospitals. Not surprisingly, the study found that patient satisfaction and employee satisfaction are highly correlated.

The study identified the “Seven Truths of High Performance”:

1. Visionary leadership
2. Consistent and effective communication
3. Select for fit and ongoing development of staff
4. Agile and open culture
5. Service is job one
6. Constant recognition and community outreach
7. Solid physician relationships

While all of these are key to building and sustaining a culture where employees want to work, I want to focus on one – “Service is job one.”

Medical City in Dallas, TX (the hospital that was profiled in the study) puts patients first –and all health care workers are responsible for delivering on this promise. This message is clearly communicated on a regular and consistent basis. One element of success of this “patient first” philosophy is a culture that embraces having fun.

So as we move into the new year, I want to challenge all of us to bring service to the top of our complex agendas – in a way that is fun. What examples of fun customer service have you experienced or implemented in your organization? Click below to share your examples.

The holiday shopping frenzy is past – but savvy retailers are planning ways to attract shoppers back into the stores. Maybe the key is to ramp up their dialogue with their customers. A GFK Roper Consulting Poll on the trustworthiness of sources used to make purchasing decisions reports that word of mouth was rated the highest.

In fact, 81% of consumers reported that word of mouth was “the most trustworthy source for purchase ideas and information.” (Source GFK Roper Consulting, Global Word of Mouth Study.) This was reinforced by a DoubleClick survey that reported that a friend’s recommendation was the most important influence when it came to buying a product or service. This was true for both males (92%) and females (95%)

According to a Bain and Company study based on an analysis of actual purchasing and referral patterns “Likelihood to recommend” most highly correlated with customer loyalty across seemingly disparate industries.

Why is this important to healthcare? Healthcare is moving from a patient-centric to a consumer-centric market. And in early 2008, hospitals will be required to report the results of patient satisfaction data publicly. The HCAPHPS survey includes the telling question, “Would you recommend this hospital to your friends and family.”

So, I want to suggest a new year’s goal for all of us – let’s put the systems in place to engage in a dialogue with our customers. Let’s not rely solely on patient satisfaction data to find out what our customers are thinking. Let’s talk to them immediately after an encounter – and find out what it would take to make them likely to recommend us.

At The Beryl Institute, we want to join this “word of mouth” conversation. I look forward to the discourse in 2008.

As we approach the frenzied holiday shopping season, more consumers than ever will be purchasing gifts online. Trying to avoid the crowds, these time and value conscious consumers are comfortable with the online shopping experience. What they are not happy with is lack of customer service.

According to Jupiter Research, “Customer service by phone will continue to be consumers’ contact channel of choice,” even as people buy more goods and services online.”

What does this have to do with us in healthcare? We have to meet our customers where they “shop.” This means beefing up our Web presence – making sure that patient scheduling, physician selection, class registration and even test results become available in a protected manner on-line. Our customers expect these transactions to be web-based and simple to use.

But, when they have a question or need advice, we have to offer personal assistance. This means replacing frustrating automatic telephonic mazes with real live people who can answer questions and solve problems. As the New York Times said, “Businesses should consider themselves warned: Prepare to invest heavily in traditional customer service, or prepare to lose customers.”

In a recent Health Journal article, (Wall Street Journal), Tara Parker Pope “reflects on the power of information to improve our health.” She describes the experience of her mother who was battling cancer. The first physician she consulted was not open to questions regarding treatment alternatives. The second physician was both “caring and communicative.” This enabled her mother to first fight the disease aggressively and then face death calmly.

I think the question here is not whether consumers are going to take control over their own health – but how and when. Yes, healthcare is different from other industries. But with the government and employers pushing for informed, engaged consumers to become part of the decision making process and advertisers including pharmaceuticals, medical supply, bio-tech companies, and even big retailers like Wal-Mart, CVS, and Target bombarding the airwaves with healthcare messages, how different is healthcare?

Consumers are no longer content with “healthcare as usual.” They have unprecedented access to information and resources. Increasingly, they are bearing the cost and responsibility for care. And they expect customer service, similar to what they get from other organizations. For today’s well-informed consumers, customer service includes forming partnerships with their healthcare providers around their health and wellness. Support and recognition for a customer focused culture will empower care givers to meet these new consumers and help them “take control over their own health.