Business Coaching Tips - Customer Satisfaction Improvement Plan

Pro-active Strategies

Actively look at implementing some of these proactive strategies
Supplying better quality goods or over-servicing Ensuring speedy delivery. If a customer orders today by direct mail, they are always impressed if the goods are there the next day. This sets the tone for the entire organization Offering after sales discounts Realigning product development to customer needs. This could take the form of a pro-active questionnaire that asks the customer what they liked and did not like. And then setting a product development plan from this feedback Access to additional services or goods as a reward for being a good customer Follow up with a simple customer service call - "we care about our customer" Supply a bonus gift with the sale
People Strategies

CARE IMPROVEMENT

A set of guidelines should be developed for anyone that comes in contact with a customer. These guidelines should be backed by detailed training. The types of people that typically come in contact with a customer include

Receptionist Sales people Technical people Delivery and warehouse people Secretary Telemarketers Accounts

Review what type of customers that you have, the types of issues that these people deal with and look to develop a series of quality guidelines

Systems - Implement and monitor the following systems
Customer service systems Customer feedback systems Regular training of staff Automated survey Mystery shopper Employee incentive to reward high customer service Automated CRM and access by all staff
Areas of Performance you should review
Product quality Delivery Courtesy Professionalism Product knowledge Complaint resolution Ease of doing business Invoicing/Accounts accuracy Responsiveness to enquiries Stock availability After sales service Service versus expected service
Indicators (lagged)

Lost customers (churn rate) Average value sale Referrals Average life time value Product returns Complaints Customer re-order frequency

Business Coaching Tips - Customer Satisfaction Improvement Plan

CARE IMPROVEMENT

What You Can Do As a Medical Provider to Improve Patient Satisfaction

It has been widely believed and accepted that if you provide quality patient care, your patient satisfaction rates will be high. We now know that this is not always the case. Research has shown that there is a large disparity between perceived hospital and physician quality of care and patient satisfaction across the nation. Research has also shown that patient satisfaction in many states is actually opposite what one would expect when providing quality patient care.

A survey performed by CareChex, has shown that while many hospitals and physicians across the nation ranked high in quality of care, they adversely ranked low in patient satisfaction. Florida, for example, ranked 8th in the nation for quality of care and 49th in the nation for patient satisfaction. How does this happen? It is believed that practices and facilities are spending their extra resources acquiring state of the art technology to provide high quality care to their patients. What they are lacking in many cases, is delivering exceptional care to each and every patient who enters the building. While the aesthetic appearance and technology a facility offers is important, so too is the way the patient is treated while receiving care.

CARE IMPROVEMENT PLUS PROVIDER

What does this mean for medical practices and facilities across the nation? Administrators must be proactive in gathering feedback from their patients. Patient surveys must become a common part of the practice. The medical industry at large has become highly competitive and as such, if your patients are not happy, they will go elsewhere. Gathering feedback alone is not enough, you must also implement any needed changes. If you take the time to ask your patients about their experience and then do nothing to fix any problems that may be present, you are telling them that their opinion truly does not matter. This is worse than not asking their opinion at all.

By taking a proactive approach to measuring patient satisfaction and then implementing needed changes, medical practices will bridge the gap between patient satisfaction and quality of care. The practices that deliver not only quality care, but exceptional service are the ones who will prosper the most!

What You Can Do As a Medical Provider to Improve Patient Satisfaction

CARE IMPROVEMENT PLUS PROVIDER