I recently conducted a webinar for the American College of Healthcare Executives. The topic was "Maximizing Customer Service to Drive Revenue" and I joined Britt Berrett, CEO of Medical City in Dallas, to describe his customer service initiatives and the resulting increase in the hospital's bottom line. Prior to the webinar, I took the opportunity to survey the attendees to get their perceptions on several related questions. I found the results quite enlightening. I first asked them how they rated the impact of consumerism on their patient and marketing strategies. On a scale of 1-10, the average score was 7.5, indicating that the impact of consumerism is fairly substantial. I then asked these organizations to rate their senior leadership's understanding of the impact of customer service in improving financial results. The average in this case was 7.7, indicating a very high understanding of the relationship between customer service and revenue growth.

However, on the question of how they'd rate their organization's ability to track the ROI of an improvement in their customer service focus, they rated themselves a 4.9. What does that tell us? While organizations are finally realizing that customer service is a competitive advantage, we're still not good at measuring the financial impact.

At The Beryl Institute, we will be publishing only evidence-based data that illustrates the financial impact of an improvement in the customer experience. We hope you continue to find this information useful as we strive toward our mission of improving customer service in healthcare.