Ways Doctors Can Create Remarkable Patient Experiences

Quality in a service or product is not what you put into it. It is what the client or customer gets out of it.

–Peter Drucker

Service quality is a crucial factor for your patient experiences, isn’t it? Are you clear why customers choose your practice? Related to the experience you have provided? More often than not it is why patients stay with you. It is surprising to us how many Physicians aren’t clear on this question.

Peter Drucker certainly understood the real meaning of a great customer experience design, didn’t he? The end state quality of what the customer received was what counted. Including the experience, the customer received while he purchased the service. Often that is what was remembered the most.

So what constitutes a great customer experience?

The quality of your practice’s customer experience is ultimately determined by the way customers feel after their last interaction. If the customer is unhappy, your customer experience is bad. If the customer doesn’t have a feeling one way or the other, your company’s customer experience is mediocre. If the customer feels good, your company’s customer experience is satisfactory.

But if the customer feels delighted, your company’s customer experience is a substantial competitive advantage. That is the only one that matters to success.

When it comes to the physician service you receive, most people are more tolerant and more accepting than with most other businesses. But should it be that way though?

See our article on the nine truths to improve customer experience and service design.

It shouldn’t and here is how I would redesign many of the customer experience elements in Physician’s offices:

Respect value of patients’ time

Most people today suffer from too little time, and it is an increasingly important factor. Time is the one thing that even the richest patients don’t have enough of. So patients’ perceptions about your practice’s customer experience are largely influenced by time. Often the meaning correlates with convenience.

Building and maintaining trust

Always do what you say and set good examples. Demand from yourself the same level of professionalism and dedication that you expect from others on your staff. Trust, once broken, is seldom restored to its original state. It is the most fragile yet essential attribute of leadership.

Go the extra mile

Customers like knowing that the doctor and his staff care. Great service is the top reason customers keep giving their business to doctors and the top reason they recommend them to others. It is critical to ensure that your practice delivers great service care. The care that results in good results and great experiences that are remembered and talked about. So far based on action item response time and errors, the new doctor, and staff indicate they care much more about the business revenue than their care and service.

Show personality

Patients don’t want to be treated like a number. They want to feel valued, understood, and most importantly, listened to. Their belief? That the money they spend with your practice entitles them to such treatment. The differentiation of the experience your doctor delivers will, therefore, be at least in part contingent on your ability to personalize his interactions with patients. That means knowing their name, their previously expressed health issues, or listening to the particulars of their current situation. Lots of small ways to create customer personalization.

Doctors and staff who rarely smile and engage socially at one on one engagement are at a very serious disadvantage in being able to create a delightful customer experience. In the longer term, a practice needs to build relationships with all patients. Hard to do with no personalized engagement.

Expectations

If promises are not kept, expectations by the patient not achieved, negative experiences result. Too negative and your practice will lose the patient forever. The absolute last thing that either the practice or the new patient desire. But that is what often happens.

Build patient relationships

Build patient relationships like you make friends. Be pleasant, social … wear a smile and a nametag. All things being equal, people like doing business with their friends. Not very good at making friends? Maybe being a physician is not for you.

Follow through

If a patient is told X will be done, they should feel that it will happen. Hopefully faster and better than promised. If something unexpected happens, a good experience demands the customer be notified and kept informed. Often, the staff is not good at putting closure dates on commitments … which is not a good sign.

Actively solicit feedback

Many patients are itching to tell you how to improve. If they are not given an opportunity, it degrades the experience. Likewise, patients always feel good when they see positive improvements. Few practices that I have ever been associated with seek feedback or notice much when it is given unsolicited.

Listen to and observe patients well

Close observation and effective two-way conversations begin with doctors and staff listening carefully before responding. They should also take care patients understand the ‘whys’ of the doctors’ decisions. Being stuck on transmit mode in a two-way conversation won’t go anywhere fast. The new physician’s office indicates that they can’t take the time to do much explaining to patients.

Explain, educate, and close

The entire physician’s staff should be encouraged to be ‘assertively friendly.’ They should seek out those who need help before they come looking for help. And most importantly close quickly on open actions. If the doctor’s staff are extremely slow in closing actions and get things wrong too many times, the experience can good bad quickly. Not a good situation … in fact unacceptable in my mind.

Staff Expertise

Patients need to believe that your practice’s staff are good at what they do. They must perceive that your staff is well-informed about products, services, policies, issues, and any other relevant subject matter. So, to project their best knowledge to your patients, you have to make sure that they are fully empowered with information that’s accurate, complete, and up-to-date. And the ability and time to provide sound advice. In the new practice, it appears to me that they have too many patients leaving them with not enough time to provide good service.