5 Ways to Improve Customer Service in Healthcare

Providing high-quality customer service in healthcare involves tending to a patient’s medical, logistical, and emotional needs throughout their patient journey. This attention extends beyond the clinical encounter to encompass touchpoints such as pre-visit appointment reminders and post-discharge care. The quality of customer service that your facility provides has a direct influence on the patient’s experience — which in turn impacts your organization’s reputation and financial health.

We’ll discuss five strategies for improving customer service at your facility, including training exercises and marketing considerations. These tactics can be used to inspire front-line staff, build better relationships with your patients, and enhance your reputation within your community. We’ll also cover the challenges of providing positive customer interactions and share examples of excellent customer service in healthcare to prime you for your own improvement efforts.

Challenges: High Expectations and Medical Stressors

Patients today have high expectations, influenced by customer experiences in other industries (such as hospitality and retail). They may expect convenience, speed, and personalized communications. However, facilities often fall short of these expectations. A recent Gallup poll indicates that American’s view of healthcare is at its lowest in over two decades.

Unlike other industries, healthcare “customers” — the patient and their family/caregivers — often come to the experience in a state of stress. They may be contending with lost wages, pain, fear about their condition, and uncertainty about the future. The healthcare environment inherently involves language and equipment that is unfamiliar to the patient, which is often a negative experience. Additional common pain points related to the patient’s perception of care delivery include the cost of services and lack of accessibility.

Acknowledge These Challenges to Improve the Patient Experience

Given the unique stressors involved in the patient experience, it’s important to tailor customer service strategies to fit the healthcare delivery model. Blanket customer service techniques, such as smiling, greeting customers by name, and maintaining a polite and professional attitude are helpful, but far from the whole solution.

Why Is Customer Service Important in Healthcare?

Finding ways to overcome the unique challenges in healthcare to create a positive experience for the patient is not only rewarding, but also crucial to providing effective care. As those of us in healthcare know, positive interactions can improve compliance with treatment plans and outcomes, while negative interactions lead to mistrust, miscommunication, and poor outcomes.

How to Improve Customer Service in the Healthcare Industry: Five Strategies

Here are five ways you can use healthcare-specific customer service strategies to enhance care delivery at your facility.

1. Increase Awareness Among Frontline Healthcare Staff

Provide training opportunities for key members of your frontline staff to increase their awareness of the patient’s experience in seeking care. Asking staff to “step into the patient’s shoes” will foster a compassionate attitude when it’s time to engage with patients. Your employees likely already know about these stressors, but active identification and discussion brings them into sharper focus. Rather than labeling a patient as “difficult” or “cranky,” your staff will be more likely to see that the patient is in a difficult situation and deserves more compassion, not less.

Example: A nurse manager on a med-surg unit delivers customer service in healthcare training at a monthly staff meeting. She asks CNAs, LPNs and RNs to identify potential patient stressors specific to the unit. A nurse might come up with the following list: My patients are dealing with the financial burden of this hospital stay, loss of control, lapsed responsibilities at home, interacting with new people, loss of privacy, disrupted sleep, serious diagnoses, and frightening medical procedures.

2. Emphasize Consistency Over Grand Gestures With Patient Care Providers

A patient’s perception of physical and emotional safety in the healthcare environment is an important factor in their satisfaction with care. Teach staff the importance of developing positive rapport with patients through consistently taking action to support the patient’s sense of safety.

Example: After receiving a complaint on a patient experience survey, a rehab unit’s director of nursing speaks one-on-one with a nurse to emphasize the importance of small gestures. The director and nurse come up with a list of ways to show caring, such as offering an extra blanket when a patient looks cold, asking about the room’s lighting, and using a warm and supportive tone.

3. Examine Facility’s Marketing and Branding

Your facility’s advertisements contribute to the patient’s expectations. If a marketing campaign promises results that your facility is unable to deliver, the gap between expectations and experience may prompt the patient to report a poor experience. Through collaboration, marketing departments, administrators, and clinical care providers can develop ads that foster realistic expectations while still driving revenue.

Example: Before approving the launch of a new radio ad, a clinic’s chief marketing officer meets with other members of the clinic’s leadership team to discuss the marketing materials. The leadership team develops a strategy for educating patient-care staff about the messaging that will be put out to the community. They develop a plan to help care teams work together to ensure the patient’s experience is aligned with the message in the advertisement.

4. Create a Staffing Structure that Supports the Patient Experience

Consider the ways your existing staffing structure can better support your customer service efforts, or install new positions onto your team. Here are some ideas for positions:

• Patient navigator
• Patient and family concierge
• Patient experience administrator
• Patient care coordinator
• Patient advocates

Example: An expanding hospital’s leadership team receives feedback that patients and their families find it difficult to navigate the campus. They incorporate a new patient concierge role into their staffing structure. The patient concierge greets everyone who enters the building, provides directions, and answers questions.

5. Use Local Resources to Provide Positive Moments In the Patient Journey

What assets does your community have? Is your town or city known for its thriving farm-to-table scene, a local dog-training school, or a world-class art museum? You have opportunities for partnerships that would create more value for your patients. Taking a creative approach to customer service by collaborating with non-medical services is one way to build in potentially wonderful experiences for patients and families.

When facilities use innovative and localized approaches to customer service in healthcare, examples often feature out-of-the-box thinking. Reading news articles about new initiatives and partnerships that other healthcare organizations are experimenting with is a great way to get ideas.

Example: A hospital partners with a local garden club to create an outdoor garden space with flowers, herbs, and a seating area. Garden club volunteers provide monthly education sessions that are open to the public. The partnership facilitates a positive reputation between the hospital and the community, giving patients who visit the garden a positive experience.

Need Fresh Ideas for Overcoming Your Healthcare Challenges?

Checking out examples of excellent customer service in healthcare is a great way to get exciting ideas for your own facility. Want more ideas and insights to help your facility thrive? Our healthcare guides and resources are created to help industry leaders like you come up with practical solutions to the challenges you face.