(9/13/2021)
At Medxcel, we believe in motivating our healthcare facilities to be engaged with our partners and communities to encourage connection, education and improvement. We even have an awards program dedicated to it! The Sites of Engaged Excellence Awards -- or SEE Awards -- recognize engagement excellence in our hospitals.
To receive this award, our facilities must have high marks in four key elements of engagement:
- Service
- Communication
- Overall relationship
- Healthy associate engagement
This is the definition of engaged excellence. So, how can your facilities promote a positive customer experience and encourage employee engagement? Let’s shed some light on what builds excellence and how other facilities or organizations can achieve it.
What does it mean to show “engaged excellence”?
A facility with engaged excellence has a team that takes ownership of their day-to-day responsibilities within the facility. The leader of that team supports the needs of the individual associates providing service. Engaged associates at these sites understand the overall mission and direction of the facility and aligns the service to meet and exceed these needs.
When you take customer service to the next level and go beyond expectations to deliver an industry-leading experience, that is when a frontline team and their interaction with customers makes the biggest impression. Remember, customer service plays a large role in defining that impression to a client.
How do you motivate leaders to achieve these results?
Leaders should focus on partnership above all else. When a customer’s needs are met, facility teams should make a point to celebrate their associates and their successes. You can create a friendly internal competition through recognition. When employees are being recognized for their efforts, it becomes something they strive for -- acknowledgement from upper management that they’re doing a great job.
Successful facilities inspire employees with celebration, and through that inspiration, they not only grow in understanding better ways of customer service and hone their skills around their customer service, but also grow technically because they are encouraged to expand in their current roles. Training and development of employees pushes them out of their comfort zones to help them grow, contributes to the company’s succession planning and helps grow the organization as a whole.
Building a positive customer experience
Open communication between organizations and the communities they serve is the best way for organizations to improve their services. Analyzing feedback from collected data is vital. Sites should analyze their metrics to determine if they are meeting requirements and achieving necessary results. Surveys are a large part of these metrics and can come directly from customer feedback. Organizations should take feedback seriously and apply changes strategically so that results are measurable. It’s important to share data and to go through it with the facility teams to understand how desired results were -- or were not -- achieved. To keep facilities running smoothly, operations must be efficient and effective to best service their patients, visitors and communities.
Every good organization has a method for understanding the values of the relationships between the services they provide and their consumers. As facilities leverage strengths and opportunities, they should take to heart the importance of two-way communication and the value of being proactive. It’s just not enough to simply react to problems anymore; taking initiative and contacting the customer when the problem arises before they have a chance to reach out shows that you are acting with urgency and understanding. This type of proactive process is what separates good and great service organizations. By focusing your efforts on being great at customer service, you’ll convert customers into loyal consumers for years to come.
This blog post was inspired by the Medxcel podcast, Outside the Patient’s Door, a commentary on the inner workings of healthcare facilities, and the people and processes that make it possible for hospitals to treat patients 24/7/365. Listen now to Outside the Patient’s Door at
outsidethepatientsdoor.com, or find us on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, Google Podcasts and more.