This week marks Customer Service Week, a week set aside to raise awareness of customer service and the vital role it plays in successful business practice and growth.   Customer Service Week is not a bank holiday; a time to feast on turkey and pie, or an occasion to buy gifts, however, healthcare providers should pay close attention to its message with the same intensity as if Santa Claus himself were speaking.

For businesses from all sectors, quality of customer service is a critical factor to business strategy. The reason is rather simple; ignoring customer service can be costly and detrimental to growth. Genesys, in collaboration Greenfield Online and Datamonitor/Ovum estimates the cost of poor customer service in the United States at $83 billion annually due to defections and abandoned purchases as a direct result of a poor experience.[1]

For businesses in the health care space, these lessons resonate just as much as a retailer or non-healthcare service provider. The goal of maintaining quality customer service for health care is essential not only for delivering quality care, but also as a measure to reduce costs and for remaining competitive.  Under the current regulatory and market environments, maintaining top class customer care is more an imperative than it has ever been. This message should resonate even more given that; the health care industry is ranked as one of the worst customer service providers, even ranking behind television and internet/wireless providers-a dubious status to say the least.[2] Having been thoroughly warned of the perils of not heeding the spirit of Customer Service Week, let us look at five ways we, at Axxess, strive to deliver quality customer service.

1.    Never, Never, Ever, Take Customers for Granted.  Without your customer base your business would not exist. One of the most effective ways to deliver quality customer care is to treat customers as being valuable to your business not just as a replaceable commodity.  Treat customers with a mix of professionalism and understanding, where you listen and understand as a colleague would while being a professional source of information.  At Axxess, many of our customer service specialists are home health care clinicians and nurses, so they appreciate the problems providers can encounter on a daily basis.

2.    Always Go the Extra Mile. If a customer asks for ‘A’ do not hesitate to deliver on ‘A’ and offer ‘B’ and ‘C.’ Not only will this instill a sense of value in your service it can often set your business off from competitors. At Axxess our customer service specialists use the Axxess Way to guide customer relations. You are not just a customer, but a valued business partner.

3.    Always Deliver as you Promise. One of the most frustrating aspects of addressing a customer service related issue from the customer’s perceptive is a lack of follow-up. At Axxess we are fanatical about customer service, when we you come to us with an issue or a question we will do everything humanly possible to resolve your problem.

4.    Listen. Customers who approach you with a problem are only doing so since they lack the ability to sort the issue themselves. We often speak without listening, let the customer lay out the basis of their issue, even if it appears misguided, listen and then offer constructive problem solving just as if they were a colleague in in your workplace.

5.    Be Consistent. Make sure that customer-facing operations do not suffer from inconsistency whereby customer service is a priority at one moment, and then it falls to the back burner at the expense of other concerns at another moment. Customers have a keen sense of when a business is overcompensating or underperforming, just be consistently excellent.

[2] https://blogs.salesforce.com/.m/company/2014/09/3-ways-healthcare-providers-revolutionize-patient-care-gp.html