CINDY BRUNER, PRACTICE manager at Professional Family Eyecare, which has offices in Coldwater, St. Mary’s and Greenville, OH, says new employees will never add to what they already know if you don’t set expectations when they start; otherwise you set them up to fail. As she sees it, it’s her job to help them understand this. “When you have long-term employees it’s easy to become ‘Magoo’ and do and say things without realizing how they’re perceived by customers, and by … teammates.” Managers, in her view, should “help staff understand that as co-workers we are customers to each other, not just the patient.” To accomplish this, she created her own training program for implementation at the practice, “9 Steps to a Phenomenal Patient Experience.”
THE IDEA
A few years ago, Bruner came across a book titled 10 Steps to a Phenomenal Patient Experience: Customer Service Secrets for the Eye Care Team by Sharon Alamalhodaei, COMT. After getting the nod from owners Dr. Jillynn Bruner and Dr. James Dickman, she combined what she learned from this with resources picked up at a Patient’s Voice skills clinic to create a list of steps that fit the culture and patients at Professional Family Eyecare. As a final touch, Bruner incorporated the “Love Dare” concept, borrowed from the marriage counseling book of the same name based on a set of 40 daily principles. “Instead of 40 days,” she says, “I broke the steps down into nine weeks. My owners described their vision of what they want their practice to be known for and with my 25 years of hospital management training I pulled my resources together and away we went.”
THE EXECUTION
Staff and doctors were given a quiz to ascertain their perceptions of how customer service impacted business. Then she handed out a “Commitment to the Practice Standards Accountability” form. Staff were asked to return this with statements explaining how they would contribute to the standards outlined on the form.
According to Bruner, the nine steps are: 1. Who’s the Boss? 2. Give Patients more Than They Expect . . . Respect 3. Handle Difficult Patients & Situations with Finesse 4. Be Ultra Aware of Time 5. Be Extremely Knowledgeable and Professional 6. Use Amazing Phone Skills 7. Be ‘On’ Stage 8. Listen to and Learn from Patient Feedback 9. Work as a Team!
Every Monday for nine weeks, staff were sent the steps in an email and at the end of each they signed an agreement to “uphold/own” the Phenomenal Patient Experience. Later, staff were given an “Own Each Patient’s Experience” accountability form and given seven days to document examples they utilized from the nine steps. Their Team Lead had to sign off.
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Getting staff to cooperate with something new is “always an eye roll” Bruner says, but it soon became part of the work process.
THE REWARDS
Implementing the plan was “most definitely worth it” Bruner says. “I was told by a wise doctor that if you take care of your patients, they will take care of you. This is true; if you give the patients a phenomenal experience, they will return and … share their experience with others.” The result is new and returning customers, which helps financially but also “sets our expectations of how we want our customers treated.”
Bruner urges managers to spend time with staff and let them know it is their job to “own each patient’s experience.” This “builds satisfaction, loyalty and referrals by creating a positive patient relationship. Staff learn to listen before responding,” she says. “That’s what patients truly want — to be heard and understood.”
Do It Yourself: Implement a customer experience training program
- RECRUIT THE DOCS. Employees may be reluctant at first; having the doctors participate helped her staff buy in, Bruner says.
- INTEGRATE. “We have monthly staff meetings and there is always a customer service topic following the program implementation,” she says.
- TWO-WAY STREET. As a manager, be open to whatever new ideas, behaviors and skills suggest themselves as a result of the program.
- KEEP IT UP. Bruner feels such programs are most useful when done once a year with staff.
- UP FRONT. Bruner has all new hires participate in the program immediately and lets them know that this is part of the “behavior” portion of their 90-day evaluation.
