I’m convinced that to truly improve the customer experience, you must go far beyond measuring satisfaction and loyalty. Experiences are created by multiple touchpoints across the whole continuum of care… from the first encounter with your brand through the last. Advertising, website, employees, doctors, nurses, physical environment, follow up, billing – all have an impact on the total experience. Until we get serious about each and every one of these touchpoints, the customer experience will suffer.

Healthcare leaders appear to be finally waking up to this reality. I was encouraged to read some of the comments from hospital executives who attended the HealthLeaders Media 2009 Marketing Experience conference in Chicago. They were challenged to think about how they could create ambassadors for their brands. Here are a few of the comments shared in a post by HealthLeaders Marketing blogger Gienna Shaw:

• Provide exceptional service—that is the best marketing.
• Ask your patients and staff—they will tell you.
• Ask patients at discharge, “What could we have done better?”
• Understand their needs and exceed them.
• Market in a way that differentiates you from competitors.
• Anticipate their questions and be consistent with answers.
• Don’t ask patients how they feel when they are laying on a gurney.
• Do something meaningful, memorable, and unexpected.
• Find something that patients generally identify with and follow that theme.
• Put the patient first.
• Personalize patient experiences every time.
• Give team members “permission” to customize the experience.

Now let’s turn those ideas into ACTION! But how?

Measuring satisfaction is good, but measuring your customer’s experience is better. Satisfaction research alone is no guarantee that there aren’t cracks in the customer experience, and where there are cracks, there are opportunities for customers to become dissatisfied.

I believe effective customer experience research includes the following components:

1. Must actually talk (have a dialogue) with customers NOT simply survey them online or with paper
and pencil.
2. Must capture customer thoughts/feelings as close to the point of intersection with the brand as
possible. May include action research or ethnography.
3. Must be measured over time and link actual behaviors with attitudes about the brand
experience.
4. Must engage the customer in the conversation that they want to have NOT in the conversation
you want them to have.
5. Must have a mechanism for capturing strong customer stories that can be shared with
others.
6. Must place more emphasis on finding the emotional connection with the brand and the emotional
drivers of brand decisions than on the functional benefits.
7. Must include periodic reporting of the individual customer experience. Taking your customers’
brand temperature over time enables you to make immediate changes that can give the brand
positive lift.

Measuring customer experiences over time can help you improve marketing and operations, develop new products and services, and create ambassadors for your brand at the same time. Can your satisfaction surveys deliver that sort of return on investment?

Are senior health executives really committed to creating better customer experiences, or are they just saying what we all want to hear?

I just read a recent HealthLeaders Media study that says patient experience is among the top five priorities of senior health executives.

Given my latest experience with our current healthcare delivery model, I hope they get started soon!

My wife needed outpatient surgery on her hip. On the appointed day, we dutifully showed up at the local hospital at the unseemly hour of 5 a.m. for her scheduled 7 a.m. surgery. Following registration, we were taken to a private room, and she changed into one of those flimsy gowns that hospitals are famous for…except this one had holes in it. (what does that say about respect for a patient?)

And then we waited. And waited. And waited some more. Finally, after numerous inquiries, we learned that our surgeon had switched the order of surgeries for the day. Finally, at 2 p.m. she was taken down for her one-hour surgery. Wouldn’t a little communication have been helpful?

We finally left the hospital after 7 p.m. that night, tired and with a less than positive impression of the hospital and the doctor.

Apparently, I’m not alone. Discontent with the current healthcare system is growing. A new study from Deloitte indicates that healthcare consumers want to be more engaged and gain greater control over their healthcare decisions. The Deloitte study finds:

• Nearly 40% of consumers rate the U.S. healthcare system a D or F
• A quarter of consumers have skipped care when they were sick or injured; two in five of them did so
because they simply could not afford it, were not covered by insurance or thought the costs were
too high
• Three in 10 switched medications in the past year; 38% switched to save money
• 53% of consumers would like employers to be required to provide health insurance for employees
• 37% favor a mandate requiring every American to obtain health insurance either through direct
purchase of through an employer or government program
• Seven in 10 say they would participate in a wellness program if they were given financial incentives,
such as reduced insurance premium or monetary reward
• 13% of consumers have visited a retail clinic this year and 30% said they would do so if it cost 50%
less than seeing a doctor in a doctor’s office
• 42% want access to an online personal health record connected to their doctor’s office
• 65% of consumers are interested in home monitoring devices that enable them to check their
condition and send the results to their doctor

Sounds like consumers know what they want, and many of them are demanding to be heard. So if you’re a healthcare provider or a health plan, you should probably be asking - do I know what my patients and/or customers want? Am I engaging them in a way that makes them want to tell others? Or are they unhappy and ready to tell anyone who will listen?

Consider these websites…all devoted to giving disgruntled customers a voice:

Physicianreports.com

RipoffReport.com

Complaints.com

PissedConsumer.com

What are your customers saying about you?

Is your organization going through some kind of major change? If so, what are the ramifications for your CUSTOMERS?

This may be a moment when you need to intentionally add resources and attention to being sure your customers get through the change with you.

I got to thinking about this the other day when I visted my usual Harris Teeter grocery store to buy about a dozen items. The store is in transition - they are enlarging the existing store by about 20%. And the store is staying open while they move entire sections from one side to another. Some areas are not well lit, and some of the floors are unfinished (raw concrete). Now, I can handle all that. But here’s the rub: I couldn’t find a number of the items I wanted to buy!

There were NO SIGNS hanging above the aisles. Worse, there were no store employees posted around the store to help me. And check-out took longer than normal (not sure why).

The net result was that I spent less than I would have, I’m dissatisfied, and I’m not going back - at least until I’m absolutely CERTAIN that the place is completely finished. I may even switch to a competitor.

True, I’m just one customer. But how many others are having the same experience?

So, if your organization is doing a major remodeling, or just making a significant shift to other things that “touch” your customers - like your phone system, billing system, etc. THINK long and hard about what disruption may mean for your customers - and take steps to OVER serve those customers, if you want to keep them.

Over the past two months, I’ve had the “privilege” of being a consumer of healthcare services, and let’s just say I’m underwhelmed. I’m left with the distinct impression that the two different urology specialists I saw are still living in the last century in terms of the total “customer experience” they provide to their patients.

Why? Let me illustrate -

Wait Time: F

With the specialist I’ll call “Dr. Adams,” I had to wait an average of 45 minutes in the waiting room past my scheduled appointment time, then another 15-20 minutes in the “little room” aka exam room. I went to see a second specialist whom I’ll call “Dr. Baxter,” and the length of time spent waiting was about the same, only worse. Worse because in that case I asked the receptionist how long th wait would be, and she said only about 20 minutes.

So, I’m left wondering - (1) Why can’t doctors function somewhat closer to schedule, (2) why can’t they call or text me ahead of time and tell me to come 15-30 minutes later if they are running late, and (3) why can’t the staff help manage my expectations by providing a more accurate answer when I ask about the waiting time?

Personal Communication by the Doctor: A

Both doctors were good at this. They sat down and made eye contact. They asked relevant questions and took notes. They conveyed medical information clearly and directly (as I would expect). They also asked if I had questions and answered with responses that sounded honest and were helpful. They laid out the alternatives and risks. I appreciated all of that.

Discharge Instructions: F

After a biopsy, which was done under general anesthesia, I was given no discharge instructions in writing and was only told verbally not to drive for the next few hours. There was no indication that there might be some unpleasant side effects or aftermath to the procedure, which, unfortunately, I had to find out on my own.

Follow-Up Communication: F

The doctor’s office where I went for my biopsy had me fill out a new sheet indicating whether I wanted follow-up phone calls made by their office to my business, home, or cell numbers, and whether or not they were permitted to leave a message on any of these numbers. Well, they must have lost the sheet. They did the opposite of what I requested!

Secondly, only some five days after my biopsy did someone from the doctor’s office call to say that I was supposed to get a prescription and start taking the meds right away! The person was gracious enough to say they would call in the prescription to a drug store of my choice, but asked me if I knew the number of the CVS pharmacy I mentioned!

Now, also consider the following:
– a waiting room that, in one case, was too cold and pretty sterile
– a check-in staffer who was not warm or welcoming
– websites that only provided the most minimal information about the quality of the doctors and their experience with my condition
– a bill that was larger than I expected (yes, I had asked a staff person about the costs since I’m paying for this out of my HSA)

Overall, I came away feeling disappointed and frustrated by the experience. I’m certainly not ready to recommend either of these well-respected physicians, and I may seek another one for future needs.

As a consumer, I’m left wondering: is there a urologist who “gets it” in terms of delivering the kind of 21st century customer experience I’m seeking?

I’ve long believed in the power of the checklist.

A checklist of “to do” items is a potent tool to help in managing my time, and for accomplishing the most important tasks I need to do in a given day while keeping an easy-reference “registery” of “yet-to-be-done” activities.

When I’m headed out on a long trip, I make up a checklist of what to pack increasing the odds that I end up with a shirt, slacks, and sweater that actually go together. And I’m always reassured when I see the pilot of my plane consulting his printed checklist, and marking off the pre-flight items just as he’s done (hopefully!) on hundreds of previous flights.

Now, there’s strong evidence that having checklist makes a difference in healthcare, too! A worldwide study recently reported in the prestigious New England Journal of Medicine says that having - and following - a checklist can cut surgery deaths by 50% and complications by one-third!

The most dramatic gains occurred in developing countries, since many of the items on the checklist are common practice in U.S. hospitals — things like marking the spot for surgery with a bright magic marker, asking the patient their name and what they are in surgery for before administering anesthesia, counting the sponges before closing incisions, etc. All of us have heard horror stories about the occasional episode where the surgeon removes the wrong body part or leaves a small tool inside the body of a patient.

As one of the study authors, Dr. Alex Haynes of the Harvard Public School of Health, said: “Most of these things happen most of the time for most patients, but we need to make it so that all these things happen all the time for all patients, because each slip represents an opportunity for harm.” And in this new age of healthcare consumerism, these slips also represent a risk of reduced business. The proliferation of social networks and Internet data are a real and present danger for all healthcare organizations which I would think makes the checklist all that much more important.

Let’s face it - just because a doctor has done the same procedure many times before, there’s always a chance for a mess-up… they’re human. Once in a while, they may skip a critical step, or forget to do something that causes big problems downstream - is it possible that something as simple as a checklist could be the saving grace? - a critical point to consider as consumers make choices about which hospital and which doctor they will see based on quality data now readily available in our Information Age.