Customer Experience is Critical
On July 8th, I had my appendix removed. It was not an emergency procedure; it had been planned for months due to a polyp inside the mouth of my appendix. The good news is, the surgery went well and the polyp was benign, and as my son said, “no one reads the appendix anyway.”
While the result was positive, getting to this point was not.
Years ago, I was talking with my client Rudy, an SVP at Oracle about customer satisfaction. He said, “I don’t care about customer satisfaction.” Naturally, I was surprised by his comment. He went on to say that “I’m a satisfied Mercedes Benz customer, but my next car won’t be a Mercedes. I want loyal customers, not satisfied ones.” Wow, talk about instant education. There it was: customer loyalty should be the objective, not satisfaction.
Here is my customer/patient experience related to my surgery. I was scheduled to have my appendix removed July 7th and have my pre-op appointment on the 5th. The week prior, I received an email from the hospital asking me to go into their patient portal to complete per-registration. On June 29th, I logged into the portal and completed a series of forms.
There, I saw that my surgery was scheduled for the 8th and that my pre-op testing was being moved from the morning to the afternoon of the 5th. Confused, I reached out to the doctor’s office to find out what was going on. The scheduler told me that my surgery date was moved due to the doctor’s schedule change, and she confirmed that my pre-op testing was also moved. I asked, “How come I wasn’t informed?” She responded, “she was out the previous week and she hadn’t gotten to it. She acknowledged it was her responsibility and apologized for not yet getting to it.” Although it was already mid-day Wednesday, I accepted her apology and appreciated that she owned up to it.
On Tuesday, July 5th, I arrived for my pre-op tests only to find out that the scheduler hadn’t scheduled me for a pre-op telemedicine visit and was told the tests were not in their computer system. Thankfully, the front desk person that day did care about my experience and went out of her way to arrange for a nurse practitioner to see me in the office before I had my tests. I did have to wait a while, but was able to get it all done, although it took two hours.
While I was in with the tech performing the tests, someone stopped by and asked me to check in at the front desk before I left. When I went to the front desk no one was there, so I spoke up asking for assistance. Two women I didn’t recognize came from behind the wall and I communicated that I was to come to the front desk before I left. They asked me if I had all my tests done and I confirmed I had, and they said I was free to go.
No less than fifteen minutes later my phone rang, and it was someone from the office asking if I could come back in because I hadn’t completed pre-op registration. I informed them that a) I had already gone onto their patient portal and completed all that was requested, b) I had just spent two hours in their office so if they needed more from me, they had ample time to get it, and c) I was already in my car and approaching the highway out of town, so no, I would not be coming back in.
Early the next morning I got a call and answered their few questions and was off the phone in less than five minutes.
If I was evaluating the surgeon by the pre-op experience, I would have canceled my surgery. I did reach out to the scheduler’s boss to share my experience. This was not to get her in trouble, but to make sure that the supervisor knew what was happening in their organization.
The poor experiences didn’t end there. On July 20th we went to the doctor’s office for my post-op checkup. Shortly after being put in a treatment room, a nurse practitioner came in to check on my belly and the incision points. All good. She was done in less than five minutes. I liked that. She indicated the doctor would be in to see me.
Then we waited and waited. The nurse came back and said the doctor was waiting for my pathology report. We waited some more and then my wife and I agreed this was ridiculous. I went into the hallway to find the nurse and luckily, she came into the hallway a moment later. I invited her to join me and asked why we can’t just have the doctor call me with the pathology report. She said she could and then proceeded to report that the preliminary results were good and there was nothing to be concerned about. So, we left. The nurse communicated the surgeon was angry the report hadn’t been completed, that did nothing to change my patient experience.
The nurse called the next morning to confirm that in fact the polyp was benign and there was nothing to worry about.
One problem with healthcare is it’s so fragmented, and there seems to be little accountability. Who was going to hold the doctor responsible for not completing my pathology report in a timely way accountable? I know, no one will. It’s been my experience that this healthcare organization, which has grown dramatically over the last 8-10 years through acquisitions, seems to be focused on growth and vision, not on patient experience.
It wasn’t just my recent experience there. This was the same hospital, the flagship of the system, that treated my mother when she had hydrocephalus and ultimately needed a shunt installed. We had many poor experiences through that process as well.
This healthcare institution seems to be focused on market dominance, not patient experience.
If customer loyalty is the objective, how do we get there? Two words, customer experience.
Here are some reasons why customer experience matters:
Increasing customer retention by 5% increases profits by 25-95%.
The probability of selling to an existing customer is 60-70%, while the probability of selling to a new prospect is only 5% to 20%.
It costs up to 7x more to acquire a new customer than to retain an old one.
One customer experience agency found loyal customers are 5x as likely to repurchase, 5x as likely to forgive, 4x as likely to refer, and 7x as likely to try a new offering.
89% see customer experience as a key factor in driving customer loyalty and thus retention.
Think about your own experiences. If you feel you are treated well, and people honor their word, you are much more likely to be loyal. If, however, you object to their business practices or how they treat you, regardless of the quality of the product or service you are likely to be less loyal, and if the experiences are poor enough, you will replace them.
As I was leaving my follow up visit, the nurse reminded me to have a colonoscopy in three years and informed me the surgeon does them and asked if I’d like to have a reminder sent to me. I declined.
I am satisfied with the surgery but not with the experience before or after.
Poor experiences = no loyalty = lost patient and lost revenue.