Customer Service

Customer Service, A Wise Investment.

Eye Site of Tampa keeps the customer satisfied.

By Bill Kekevian, Senior Associate Editor

Elizabeth Holloway had a formative experience when she first embarked upon a career as an ophthalmic professional. She would eventually become the chief operations officer for the Eye Site of Tampa Bay in Clearwater, Florida. At the time, though, she was just starting out and, at this particular moment, she was interested in learning about the medical side of the office and operating as the refractive surgery coordinator for Herbert P. Knauf, MD. Dr. Knauf had just begun implanting the Visian ICL and Ms. Holloway was placed in charge of the project to work with its first patients. The first patient had her second eye completed, but Dr. Knauf wanted to see her at the end of the day to double check her IOP. However, the patient had no ride back to the office, so she decided to spend the day in the waiting room. Waiting.

“I insisted that she go home,” says Ms. Holloway. “I offered to drive and bring her back for her post-op. When I drove up to the address she had given me, I waved at her, to show her I was there. I nearly cried when she waved back at me without glasses. I hadn’t even thought about it when I had lifted my hand, but as she waved back, it struck me that this woman had been -11.00 OU just three days earlier. Now, every time this patient comes into our office, I have to stop whatever I am doing and come out and say hello.”

On page 14: LouAnn Gregory, back office assistant; Herbert P. Knauf III, MD; Elizabeth Holloway, chief operations officer. Page 15: Barbara Arend, Sandra Davis, Jan Gross, Lori Lesante of the PASCO Phone Team.

For Ms. Holloway, customer service isn’t just about the patient; it’s also about her own job satisfaction.

“I love discovering something that will make everyone’s lives easier,” she says.

That drive can have a significant impact on patient satisfaction. Ms. Holloway’s passion for and dedication to customer service is what brought her to the attention of Ophthalmic Professional. Now, she writes the customer service column.

Importance of Customer Service

As Ms. Holloway puts it, a poor customer service experience erodes confidence in the physician. That should go without saying, but in today’s world, where sharing information about a practice with the world is literally at a patient’s fingertips, unhappy customers can seriously wound a practice. Witness the rise of reputation-repairing websites. They’re companies specifically designed to bury bad reviews. But if your practice’s customer service isn’t up to snuff, there aren’t enough Web crawling revisionists in the world to keep patients from venting their frustrations. On the other end of the spectrum, customer praise can act as free advertising and raise the profile of a practice. In short, patients equate customer service to the quality of medical care.

A Customer Service Regimen

For those who read that and doubt their own practice’s commitment to customer service, Ms. Holloway has some recommendations. First, she says, consider incorporating a system that gives your whole team a common language.

“There are really good programs out there, but I think that an office has to have a single focus when working together,” she says. “I also think it is very important to have physicians who participate and set the example for their staff. Our physicians are stellar doctors and wonderful people. I think that translates to our staff on a daily basis.”

The program her practice works with incorporates a feature that identifies staff members’ top 5 personal strengths.

“The majority of our staff have strengths that lend them to caring for patients,” she says. “Many of them posses empathy, connectedness, harmony, and responsibility. We have some of the kindest people in the area working with our patients. This makes a powerful combination of people working together to give their best to our patients.”

In addition, she says, the practice subscribes to Web-based learning tools for staff. “We place a premium on professional certifications and pay all expenses for our staff to pursue professional development,” she says.

Incentivizing Good Service

To enhance customer service, one of the programs Eye Site of Tampa Bay and its sister practices (Eye Site of Clearwater and Eye Site of Pasco) recognize is the “Good For You” program, Ms. Holloway says. The program incentivizes random good deeds. Staffers, team leaders and physicians who see a colleague going above and beyond the call of duty, are encouraged to document what they’ve witnessed. The documents are then transferred to pre-printed pads called “Good For You’s,” which are then posted on a break room bulletin board. At the end of the month, these “Good For You’s” are entered into a drawing and the winner gets a gift certificate to a local restaurant. While only one team member wins the drawing, every entry is read aloud and discussed. It’s a fun and positive way to discuss customer service skills with the whole staff.

Surgical counselors Shannon McBride (left) and Louise Robinson

This system of creating incentives isn’t limited to staff. The practice also employs a “new patients” thank you program. “Whenever a new patient comes to our office, we send them a card thanking them. We have pre-printed cards with a kind message, but what truly makes it special is that our staff takes the time to sign the cards before we mail them. Every few months, we will host a signing party during staff meetings. We bring pizza and put our personal touch on each card,” she says. “Patients let us know how much they appreciate the cards. We have actually received thank you cards for our thank you cards!”

Constantly Improving

With changes in technology and regulations come changes in customer service. Switching to EHR has been a challenge for Eye Site of Tampa Bay and its sister practices, particularly in as far as efficiency goes. The learning curve associated with using the new system means customer service is going change too. “We have all been trying to focus on that, as a team,” Ms. Holloway says. “We had our business advisor at meetings talking about creating clear commitments to customer service.

“As a team, we identified that patient wait times needed to improve the most. We all identified personal goals about how we wanted to treat patients.”

Also, each team member identified three items they personally could work on to improve their own performance. This kind of self-evaluation and open discussion allows the practice to come up with unique processes. These EMR growing pains, for example, have led to the birth of a “New Patient Specialist” program. The practice identified that inputting medical history for new patients was a limiting process for their physicians’ schedules. The solution? The practice created a position for a staff member to call new patients, welcome them to our practice, record and enter their medical history, and help coordinate the receipt of transferred records, Ms. Holloway says.

As a result, patients have far less paperwork to complete when they arrive for their appointment and they appreciate the personal attention. The staff is also happier with the easier system. And they’re not stopping there. On the horizon, Eye Site of Tampa Bay is going to make that process available to patients online.

“At our office we are all aware how interdependent we are. A seemingly small mistake in one area can have dramatic impact on the effectiveness of a fellow team member. We strive hard to pay attention to detail to minimize errors,” she says. “We try to funnel concerns through team leaders who can resolve the issues and help retrain staff to the proper protocol.” OP