Employee Alignment with Leadership Philosophy = Great Customer Service

 By: John A. Corpus, Vice President Client Services, Legato Marketing & Communications.

New to the Legato team, I thought that I would write my first blog about connectivity in a healthcare organization: leadership being connected to the employees; employees connecting their responsibilities back to the organization’s overall mission/objectives; messages/campaigns/marketing being connected across departments and the system.

Having worked for a few Wisconsin healthcare entities over the last thirty-two years, I feel safe in stating that the healthcare environment is always evolving, each time in a more complicated manner.  Every few years, it seems that healthcare organizations are updating their missions/visions to ensure that they balance this change and properly reflect the nature of the organizations’ objectives and philosophy.

Unfortunately, there is a natural lag between “talking the talk” and “walking the talk” in every organization I have served in.  Now, the organizations that I am talking about are 1,000+ employees each in size, to which one might deem a lag as acceptable, but it is never a good thing to say one thing (as an organization) and do another.   And, those doing the saying are “leadership”, whereas the employees execute the “doing.”

Healthcare is a service industry: customer service is our main measure (patient satisfaction surveys). Sure, we look at outcomes and measures around varying procedures and for quality purposes, but success really comes down to how the patient FEELS about the healthcare organization.

My wife and I recently took our daughter into a retail clinic (nurse practitioner or physician’s assistant providing acute/episodic assessment and treatment in a retail setting) at noon on a Sunday.  The promise is “no wait, no appointment,” but what I found was one location with a one-hour wait, and a second location that refused to see my daughter, even though my wife called the triage line to verify the appropriateness of the visit.  The provider went so far as to grab a menu of services and point-out the line that indicates she would not see my daughter!

My wife called the triage line to voice our dissatisfaction.  The nurse on the triage line did not apologize, but did say that we could schedule an appointment with our doctor for the next day OR VISIT its competitor’s retail clinic.  And, we had to call back to a different number to schedule.

In calling to schedule the appointment, we were transferred twice to “scheduling for surgery.”  On the third transfer back, my wife finally reached a nurse who informed us that the ER has an urgent care service for kids each day starting in the late afternoon into the late evening.  The nurse listened to my wife’s reiteration of all that happened, apologized, and made an appointment for my daughter later that afternoon.  Everything was smooth sailing and excellent service from this point on.

In telling you this story, what is my message regarding this healthcare organization’s customer service?  Is the organization connected in its customer service message?  Imagine that I am a close friend, neighbor, or relative telling you this story: how will my telling of the story influence
your healthcare buying decisions?

The best ambassadors and representatives of your healthcare organization are your employees, especially those with patient/customer contact on a daily basis.  These employees will demonstrate the organization’s message in their service, but only to the extent and direct correlation of time and effort  – or lack thereof – spent on communicating, training, and aligning/connecting responsibilities and tasks with the organization’s objectives.

Some final thoughts:

• As a C-level executive in your healthcare organization, are you confident that your employees are demonstrating your philosophy in their daily activities, especially when engaging patients/customers?
• Is middle-management aligning its areas of responsibility with the organization’s philosophy?
• Does middle-management translate the formal language of leadership’s philosophy into terms that the employees can understand?  The better the translation, the clearer the message, the more likely that patients/customers will walk away with a smile on their face.