When it comes to instilling customer service standards in doctors, I recommend basing your strategies on mission-based and reputational incentives, exclusively or in combination with financial incentives. In last month’s blog post, I shared a real world story about a doctor whose customer service delivery with a worker’s comp patient was less than stellar. Truth be told, it was abominable. In this month’s post, I’ll explore strategies to mitigate such customer service fails by doctors.
Real World Story: “Aspiring future doctors spend many of their formative years training in science—immersing themselves in the disciplines of physiology, biology, and biochemistry. Throughout these academic years and into the course of their careers, the study of medicine leads doctors to develop clinical autonomy in decision making, which gives them opportunities to develop the core competencies to be leaders. Their dedication to this rigorous formal training and practice of medicine, however, gives doctors very few opportunities to develop any level of fluency in customer service strategies and how they relate to the overall care of their patients, much less how to motivate the staff under their leadership to deliver great service. After all, doctors are in the profession of healing patients and not in the business of making people feel good about how they are treated.
“So how do you incentivize doctors to be part of your practice’s customer service program, and how do you hold them accountable when they fail to meet your practice’s service standards? As I mentioned at the start of this post, you can motivate through financial and/or non-financial strategies. Effective non-monetary strategies include mission-based and reputational incentives. By establishing these incentives, medical directors can then hold their doctors accountable for great service leadership or poor performance.
“Let’s first explore mission-based incentives. These incentives are based on the intrinsic value that doctors place on helping others. It is what drives physicians to be “good doctors” and “do no harm.” Mission-based incentives include tapping into professional ethos and establishing a shared purpose. Tapping into professional ethos delves into the oaths that doctors pledge at their graduation from medical school. And doctors take these pledges seriously and personally. These oaths will guide them throughout their medical careers. Establishing a shared purpose will build upon tapping into professional ethos to include sharing these ideals with a community of like-minded professionals, all working together for a common purpose. As long as doctors’ values align with organizational values, a shared purpose will be established, where delivering exceptional customer service to patients is a common goal.
“Now let’s take a look at reputational incentives. Doctors, like many other professionals, are competitive by nature. Therefore, these incentives are a great driving force for changing behaviors. These incentives include internal peer comparisons and public reporting. Internal peer comparisons involves the friendly competition of comparing one doctor against another. You can do this, for example, through patient surveys and sharing results internally. Which doctor will receive the best reviews in a given period of time? But what if you have one doctor only in your practice? Then the competition is whether or not that one doctor can grow her or his positive survey results from one month or quarter to the next. Public reporting can include social media resources like the general consumer ratings site Yelp or healthcare specific sites like Healthgrades or RateMDs, to name a few. On such sites, the ratings competition among doctors can extend beyond the single practice. It can include a community, city, region or even a medical specialty like pediatrics or orthopedics, for example.
“Before we discuss holding doctors accountable, I first want to mention that doctors, as leaders, must also serve as cheerleaders for their staff members. In a recent interview, I explained, ‘If the managers and leaders aren’t on board [with your practice’s customer service training program] and acting appropriately, and holding staff accountable, the training won’t work for very long. Also, my most successful clients are the ones where the top leaders are on board. Leadership has to be the cheerleader, because everything flows downhill. If we want to focus on customer service, let’s start with leadership. They need to demonstrate it, they need to talk about it, they need to reward for it. They need to focus. Without top leadership, it’s going to be a struggle.’
“So once you incentivize doctors to provide exceptional customer service as well as cheerlead their staff to do the same, how then do you hold doctors accountable for great or poor customer service? Two cut-and-dry ways are to make it a part of the job description and also a part of the job performance review process. On the job description, make customer service a top priority, so doctors are fully aware that a big part of their job responsibilities includes the delivery of great customer service. On the job performance review, make it a metric on which salary increases or other perks are dependent. You then have the option of financially rewarding great service or withholding financial rewards for poor performance.
“Whether your medical practice suffers from poor customer service by doctors, or you’re looking to improve upon already great service, with a few strategic changes in how you motivate doctors and hold them accountable for great or poor service, you can see great results that have patients singing your praises.”
Strategies that Turn it Around:
- Tapping into professional ethos: Helping others is an intrinsic core value that doctors hold sacred. In developing your customer service delivery standards, keep this in mind in order to motivate doctors to participate in your customer service goals.
- Establishing shared purpose: Find common ground between your organization’s values and the core values held by doctors. Then make this shared purpose a part of your customer service program in which doctors are excited to participate.
- Internal peer comparisons. Healthy competition is a great way to change behaviors. If you want to motivate your doctors into delivering exceptional customer service to patients, then implement ways in which a doctor can compete with other doctors, or with themselves, to see who can deliver the best results in patient satisfaction.
- Public reporting. Every professional wants to be recognized for the great work she or he creates, and doctors are no different. Using social media as a way to motivate doctors into being excited about delivering the very best in customer service.
- Hold accountable. Having incentives to motivate doctors to buy into your customer service delivery program is great, but without accountability, the program is bound to suffer in the long run because of issues like empathy burnout. But when you reward great service and withhold rewarding poor performance, you stand a better chance at long-term, consistently positive results.
Remember: Getting doctors to buy into your customer service program can seem like a daunting task. But with a few strategies that center on doctors’ values, purpose, and sense of competition, your practice can grow its positive customer service efforts for delivering long-term, consistently exceptional patient experiences.
How does your medical practice get doctors to buy-in to your customer service delivery program? Sign up for our customer service course today to learn more about how to ensure your team is handling gifts of appreciation appropriately and in line with office policy. It’s a great way to ensure ethical customer service delivery!
Barbara Khozam, Accredited Speaker, CSP®, CPXP
Customer Service Speaker – Trainer – Author
Phone: 619 572 1117
Email: Barbara@BarbaraKhozam.com Website: www.BarbaraKhozam.com
