The medical field is an ever evolving force that many doctors are not prepared to deal with. Once out of medical school, the importance is placed on building a practice and making sure that you are able to sustain while paying off a mountain of debt. Unfortunately this approach sometimes leaves a lot to be desired in customer service and customer relations when dealing with your patients.
After spending many years in the health care industry myself, I fully understand what each and every doctor endures to complete their education, and earn the ability to practice, but why put that into jeopardy with poor customer service? Today's private practice is not different from any retail business, customer service in your office is the key to customer retention. Any patient that feels that they are not receiving the best customer service now has the ability to go online and quickly choose another provider at the click of a button. In making sure that you are providing a positive experience from the waiting room to the exam room, you are making sure that you are able to retain current patients, get patient referrals further increase your practice.
The simplest way to make sure you are providing the best experience is to look at your patients not as patients, but as clients. Many private practices have moved this direction, and have seen a positive response from their patients/clients. How can changing years of thinking, change the way that a private practice is viewed by its patients/clients? To Understand the how, you first have to understand the differences between what we consider a patient to be vs. what we consider a client to be.
A patient is coming to you because they are ill and need your services, they are there because they had no choice to be. In order for them to get better they needed a doctor’s help, after all that is what a doctor is for. On the other hand a client in many opinions, is someone that is choosing to use your business (notice I said business and not practice, not matter how you spin it, at the end of the day, your practice is your business!). By choosing to use your services, they are telling you that they appreciate you, and the services that you provide and in turn, many of your customer service staff will react in the same way. Knowing that someone is there because they choose to over because they have to causes a different type of reaction within your customer service staff. If you compare it to your everyday restaurant, you would make sure that at any given point, your customers are receiving the best service available, why not do the same for your practice.
This form of thinking does not change the reasons as to why a client is using your business, it just changes the thinking of how to treat them while they are there. Changing this thought process in your customer service staff will easily bring your practice a measurable change in your customer service. After all, you can be the smartest, brightest doctor in town, but without the right customer service there is no way that you will have the biggest practice.
