When quality trumps service, patients lose out – Healthy Debate.
I wrote the post in the link above for the Healthy Debate blog (click on the link). I’d be thrilled if you read and commented on the site!
Many thanks,
Shawn
Category: Culture Change
Less Rules = Better Patient Service: 23 Ways Over-Regulation Hurts
WestJet Airlines built their reputation breaking rules to improve customer experience. The Christmas Miracle video went viral showing WestJet staff run around buying Christmas gifts for travellers based on wishes they made as they boarded. Travellers got their wishes when they landed, and WestJet got famous. No rulebook could lay out the performance needed for the Christmas Miracle.
Medicare stands at the other end of the customer service spectrum. Over-regulation makes outstanding customer service all but impossible. Here’s how.
Regulation decreases quality.
Rules stop staff from thinking.
Rules mandate a one-size-fits-all approach to individual patients.
Regulation doesn’t keep pace with progress.
Regulators rarely know the job like front line workers.
Regulation impoverishes decision-making.
Thick rulebooks make staff hesitate, or freeze with indecision.
Rules are open to interpretation.
Rules never account for every possibility.
People can’t remember all the rules.
Rulebooks get long and cumbersome.
Regulation is expensive.
It requires hordes of managers to enforce.
Rules take hours to maintain…at huge cost.
Rules are costly to produce.
Regulation crushes ingenuity and personal effort.
Provider effort withers with command and control rules.
You can’t regulate innovation.
Regulation undermines leadership.
Top-down edicts to front-line workers don’t influence change.
Regulation assumes an air of infallibility and certitude.
Who decides which new regulations to adopt?
Regulations are complicated, but life is complex.
Healthcare should define great customer service, but it never will as long as it’s over-regulated. What can we learn from WestJet about customer service?
Grumpy Tech Meets Grumpy Customer – What Do Patients Want?
Medicare assumes fixing patient problems is crucial, and being nice, less so. We prefer polite, but don’t believe it’s essential.
Jill Dean, CEO of Brand Biology, gave a presentation “Grumpy Tech Meets Grumpy Customer. This Can’t End Well … Or Can It” at a recent customer experience conference. (Thank you, Bruce Palmer, for tipping me off to this!)
Check out the 30 min. presentation on YouTube.
Virgin Media sends out technicians to help customers with cable service problems.
Techs arrive at customer’s homes harried and edgy. Customers call when they have problems; when they are frustrated. Like healthcare, both provider and customer are often frustrated long before they meet.
Virgin tried to figure out what drives client satisfaction: technical skill or pleasant service.
They asked customers to score service on a scale from +100 (happy customer who would recommend to others) to -100 (unhappy, no recommendation). They found that when technicians:
Fixed the problem and were friendly and polite, customers scored +74
Fixed the problem and were neutral in tone, customers scored +26
Fixed the problem and were rude, customers scored -44
Did not fix the problem and were friendly and polite, customers scored 0
Did not fix the problem and were neutral in tone, customers scored -64
Did not fix the problem and were rude, customers scored -87
Rudely fixing a problem was worse than being nice but not fixing the problem at all.
No doubt, if “fixing the problem” equals saving life, people prefer having their problem fixed. However, only a tiny percentage of people seek care for life-threatening problems. Canadian emergency departments send 89% of patients home without life-threatening diagnoses.
We need to align system incentives so that everyone works to provide great customer service, not just fix problems. We should aim for every patient to recommend us to their friends.