Taking the patient experience to a new level

In previous blog posts, we’ve stressed the importance of everyone in the office simply being nice.  Don’t have your head down in a schedule book, computer or mobile device.  Smile.  Offer a friendly greeting.

Now, being nice and friendly, is relatively basic and simple, but how can you take that to the next level and be more personal with your patients?  More importantly, how can you separate yourself from your competition?  Everyone does birthday cards and anyone can script a greeting for patients walking in the door.  What makes you special?

Dale Carnegie taught us (or at least a lot of us) that everyone’s favorite topic is themselves.  So, go straight for that angle.  Here are some more specific tips:

Know the person’s name

Going back to Mr. Carnegie’s seminal work, “How To Win Friends and Influence People,” calling someone by his or her name increases the connection between people exponentially.  This is rather plain in your everyday life.  Saying “Hi” to someone has substantially less impact and weight than “Hi Bill” or “Hi Jane.”  

Take a little time to in the morning to flip through the upcoming schedule for the day and look at those pictures that you’ve taken the time to generate at the time of the consultation. The effect from this bit of extra effort could be extraordinary.

When I went to college, the RA’s in my dorm were given a set of index cards with the incoming students’ names, pictures and hometowns.  When this kid from New Orleans walked into a school on the west coast without knowing a soul, being personally greeted by 3 people within 10 minutes really raised my comfort level.

Know something about the person

Here’s a point where good service can begin to make the leap to great service.  Again, knowing that a patient’s favorite topic is himself or herself, that patient will almost always respond in a much more positive way (for how positively, I’ll refer you to Psychology Today).  Almost every patient management system has a place to allow you to add Notes on a patient.  So, if a patient is a Saints fan or can recite the entire song list from the Frozen soundtrack, you know that and can ask them about it.  Then, conversation starts and then you build a relationship.  On top of that, if you talk intelligently about it, you’ll have people wanting to see you to continue the conversation. 

Finding this information out can be relatively easy.  If that patient is wearing a cap from their favorite sports team or a Justin Bieber t-shirt or pulls out a particular model of mobile phone, you have a topic of conversation.  Small talk questions like “where do you go to school” and “what have you been up to” can get the ball rolling.  Then, note it in the database so that everyone knows.

Stay current

This should be relatively obvious, but if someone is about to exit the 5^th grade when they start treatment, they probably don’t want to be asked about 5^th grade when they are at a debond 2 years later (and if they still are in the 5^th grade 2 years later, the question might come off as a bit insulting).

Engage

Bringing that personal touch doesn’t work nearly as well if one person is designated as the “social one” while everyone else ignores the patients and makes plans for drinks that night.  Talk to the patients, if only for a moment.  Get to know them.  The rest of the stuff can be saved for lunch or after work.

And among the top 5 most annoying things in an office is when a patient gets ignored in the waiting room while 2 or 3 staff members with nothing to do chat with each other like they are at a cocktail party.  If you have that social time, dedicate it to the patient. 

And yes, there are limitation to this.  On some days, you are seeing more than 100 patients.  Knowing everyone and finding out something about them is challenging.  And I am not suggesting that you gather up the patient names, go to their Facebook accounts so you can ask them about their latest friend requests.  And while I am not suggesting that all of the pictures for a patient day be compiled into a slideshow and upload that to each staff member’s Instagram account, wouldn’t that be a nice app to have?

As always, if you have any questions, comments or suggestions for a post, feel free to contact us.