If you ask managers of any business how important their customers' experience is to customer satisfaction (i.e. engaging, memorable, personalize, relationships, etc.), along with the quality of service or product they deliver, nearly every manager would say that the customer experience is critically important. Yet they contradict themselves by their actions.
Managers get frustrated because their employees and professional service personnel think it is all about the expertise. 'Wowing' the customer consistently takes a back seat. Why? Because it is just lip service by management! Want proof? Think about most professions; nearly all the degrees, licensing and on-going education is spent on the technical expertise of the profession. Now compare that with how much customer service training is put into a new employee and how much on-going training is put into an existing staff? How many colleges offer Customer Service as a major, a minor, or even a class?
How many companies require their professional service providers to have certain levels of customer service training and/or licensing before they are allowed to work with customers, patients, or clients? Hardly any.
Medical brilliance is a CommodityA recent study found that, of the doctor's surveyed, most seemed to overrate the patient service they provide. The following results are from research conducted in 2010 by The Management & Business Academy, sponsored by CIBA Vision and Essilor.
- 97% of practices rate the quality of the service they provide as above average or higher.
- 32% rate their service as "outstanding" - the best in their community.
- When patients rave about the service of an optometric practice, they most commonly mention the quality of the human interaction that occurs during an office visit rather than the technical quality of the exam or the technology used in the practice.
- The most frequently mentioned comment from highly satisfied patients is that "staff is friendly."
This study presented research of highly satisfied patients, and
rarely did the highly satisfied patients ever mention the technical competence of the doctor or staff, the technology used by the office or thoroughness of the exam. What does this mean? Patients expect excellent medical treatment and trust they will receive it at most professional medical practices and hospitals. As a result, medical brilliance by itself is a commodity and unacceptable today as a single measuring tool. You can find the report under the Free
'Downloads' menu in 'THE Goodies' section of our site. It's called
The Management & Business Academy (MBA) report sponsored by CIBA Vision and Essilor.Want more evidence of how important demonstrations of caring and compassion can be in the medical world? Consider the following findings from the book Blink, by Malcom Gladwell
- The risk of being sued for malpractice has very little to do with how many mistakes a doctor makes.
- Analysis of malpractice lawsuits shows that highly skilled doctors get sued. In nearly every single malpractice case, the patient was quoted as saying something negative about how the doctor made them feel.
- At the same time, the overwhelming numbers of people who suffer an injury due to negligence of a doctor never file a malpractice suit at all. Why? Because of the bond they had with the doctor. They would never consider suing the doctor or his practice, even though there was negligence on the part of their doctor.
WHAT DOES ALL THIS MEAN?Patients don't file lawsuits because they've been harmed by shoddy medical care only. It is how their doctor treated them on a personal level. People don't sue doctors they like.
