Related Column: Customer Service, One Event at a Time: Part 2
One dawn morning I was nudged awake by an elbow, followed by my wife saying, “Did you take the garbage out last night?”
As the clouds cleared from my head, I could hear the roar of the garbage truck entering my neighborhood. Not wanting to endure a week with overflowing garbage, I threw on some shorts and a T-shirt and headed for the garage. As I wheeled the two fifty-gallon cans to the end of the driveway, I was disappointed to see all of the neighbors’ garbage cans lying empty in front of their houses. The garbage truck was leaving my neighborhood, and it was already a quarter mile away heading down the country road toward the next town. I had missed them.
As I stood there barefoot — mentally kicking myself for not putting the garbage out the night before — the strangest thing happened. The brake lights on the BFI garbage truck came on; the truck stopped, turned around, and returned to my house just to pick up my garbage. The driver had apparently seen me standing in my driveway and understood my dilemma. I was speechless and shocked. It was the highlight of my day.
Later that day, I found myself in need of healthcare. After arriving early for my doctor’s appointment, I sat there for 90 minutes past my scheduled time. I was eventually seen by my physician and was sent downstairs for some radiology tests. Now, mind you, this hospital is part of a large health care group that is well-respected and profitable in a major Texas medical trade area. I waited for two more hours while the technician was “called back” to perform my tests. The end result: I drove 80 miles roundtrip spent close to four hours waiting to receive tests which took less time to administer than it took the BFI driver to turn around and pick up my trash.
Does the solid waste company that my city council chose for me provide better customer service than the mega-healthcare company which operates in a retail competitive market? It did on that day.
One Event at a Time
Customer service occurs one event at a time, by one person at a time. Health care organizations and ambulance companies will spend millions of dollars trying to assure their customers that “customer service” is provided to an exacting standard, but one dissatisfied or un-motivated employee can waste that effort in a flash.
How does your service provide that “little extra something” that differentiates it from the crowd? With performance requirements and competitive obligations in place, how can a company be special?
The simple answer is that companies can’t — they can only provide an environment that will allow and encourage individual employees to provide this level of service. When employers encounter someone providing special service, they should celebrate and encourage it.
The Power of a Single Employee
A single employee, whose job is constrained by polices and protocols, has the power to make a difference through customer service. I will use this situation from outside the medical realm as an example.
Last summer I traveled roundtrip from Dallas-Fort Worth to Tulsa, Okla. on American Eagle Airlines. The day started terribly. Several flights were cancelled due to the very nondescript yet frustrating excuse of “mechanical issues.”. Everyone was moved to near-capacity flights, it was hot, and the flights were late.
However, things improved when I met an extraordinary American Eagle employee, Ms. Kim Bemis. While there wasn’t much a flight attendant could do to change the circumstances of the flight schedule, she did take extra steps to provide special service. When handing out the standard drinks, Ms. Bemis added a special touch; she had taken the time to hand-write a message on everyone’s drink napkin.
The note made me smile and I thought it was a nice, albeit slightly corny, gesture. It was after I looked around that I realized the impact it had on the other passengers. Every person, without exception, had a smile on their face and folded the napkin and placed it in their pocket or purse. They all took the napkin with them. But why? I would guess that the hand-written message made them feel good and they wanted to share it with someone else. What a great word-of-mouth marketing technique for American Eagle; they should be proud.
EMS is No Different
EMS providers focus primarily on the life-saving aspect of the business, and they are often constrained by the power and urgency of that assignment. However, as these two examples demonstrated, there are plenty of opportunities to go beyond the required minimum and provide exceptional customer service that patients will remember. Managers and leaders in the EMS industry should not only find ways to encourage such special service, they also need to celebrate it when an employee reaches such standard of care.
Part 2 will further discuss the customer service aspect of EMS, and will provide some extraordinary service examples occurring today across the country.
