not-for-profit customer-service...
Yes I work for a non-profit and generally that is said to be a "thing" with white people (and I'm about as white as we come, freakishly pale in fact). Still, my employer which I will spare naming here, has recently begun a campaign to refocus our customer service effort into creating the ideal experience, hoping to win kudos and elevate our organizations status among it's peers (most of which are also non-profits). OK, it might be unfair to assume they don't also want to provide the ideal experience simply in order to improve outcomes and generally live up to the expectations the community has of us, but the way the program is oriented, improving outcomes is a part of the ideal experience rather than the other way around. If I were part of those who built this program I might have made improving outcomes the umbrella under which all the other tools hide away from rust.
I really don't want to pick on my employer too much here so I'm going to start off by pointing out that I've worked for other organizations that have spent hundreds of thousands of dollars of their client's money buying into really stupid programs to try to improve their image all the while continuing to neglect the harder work of establishing meaningful benchmarks that can be objectively and fairly measured internally to ensure a consistent emphasis on quality is the highest priority within the organization. I've also seen other such organizations essentially buy a ranking from what is really just a marketing company so they can flaunt it in their own marketing efforts that they are a top performer in their field of service. Of course news gathering organizations, government agencies and non-profit watch-dog groups already provide such rankings in most of our important fields of service using truly objective criteria which is continually audited and for which the organizations ranked do not have to reimburse them for.
So I am refreshed that this time, I find myself a part of an organization that is at least making the effort to go through this process of quality improvement and customer service without outsourcing the job to someone else! What's more, they are actually taking (and spending the money) to bring all of us into interactive training sessions focused on this goal. I give them kudos for that, it at least demonstrates that this is not simply something we are paying lip-service to, but at least from an organization level perspective they are taking this seriously.
It kind of reminds me of the story recently about Starbucks closing down for a day to retrain their barista's how to make the ideal cup-o-joe. I'm not sure I really care how good the coffee is at these places, but for those willing to pay several dollars for what used to cost less than 50 cents in most diners, I'm sure the extra effort on quality improvement and improving the overall customer experience is greatly appreciated (unless you really needed a cup of coffee during the 2 hour window they closed all the stores)!
So I work in healthcare (for those of you just passing through) and in our little seminars various stories were told of patients who had both good and bad experiences in hospitals and we looked at what made the experiences good and what made the others unfortunate. One thing that really struck me as common in all of the bad experiences was that the patient (or relative; in some cases the actual patient had died) felt ignored and unimportant to their caregivers. Generally it seemed to be a culture rather than the actions of just one employee with a bad attitude. Even when things go wrong, the patients that felt their caregivers cared and were willing to spend the extra time to keep the patient informed and instill a little confidence that their needs are important will always rave about the way they were taken care of. The patients that do not feel the staff is interested in their wellbeing will generally complain about even minor inconveniences which might even be a necessary part of their care.
As someone not directly involved in patient care I find it easy to come to such conclusions, easy to point them out to those around the table who do have direct patient contact consistently, but also realize that I don't know the whole story about staffing concerns in individual patient care environments in our organization and the specifics of how best to address them.
Still, I was able to identify what efforts we bring to the table from the ancillary arts that do contribute to creating ideal outcomes. Overall they are not new concepts to us. We look out for mislabeled specimens, changes in lab values that could be erroneous, orders that are strange or confusing and communicate those problems to those directly responsible for the patient's care for clarification or simply to inform.
What I came away with was a sense of hope that there will be more focus in our organization on quality improvement and hope that this emphasis will trickle into my department hopefully so I feel less frustrated by the current stresses that hinder my ability to focus on the quality of my own work.
On that note, it is official, I have a new boss. Look forward to meeting the guy and hopefully eventually having a chat about what I see and what I would like to see in our part of our wonderful not-for-profit organization :)
peace,
b
I really don't want to pick on my employer too much here so I'm going to start off by pointing out that I've worked for other organizations that have spent hundreds of thousands of dollars of their client's money buying into really stupid programs to try to improve their image all the while continuing to neglect the harder work of establishing meaningful benchmarks that can be objectively and fairly measured internally to ensure a consistent emphasis on quality is the highest priority within the organization. I've also seen other such organizations essentially buy a ranking from what is really just a marketing company so they can flaunt it in their own marketing efforts that they are a top performer in their field of service. Of course news gathering organizations, government agencies and non-profit watch-dog groups already provide such rankings in most of our important fields of service using truly objective criteria which is continually audited and for which the organizations ranked do not have to reimburse them for.
So I am refreshed that this time, I find myself a part of an organization that is at least making the effort to go through this process of quality improvement and customer service without outsourcing the job to someone else! What's more, they are actually taking (and spending the money) to bring all of us into interactive training sessions focused on this goal. I give them kudos for that, it at least demonstrates that this is not simply something we are paying lip-service to, but at least from an organization level perspective they are taking this seriously.
It kind of reminds me of the story recently about Starbucks closing down for a day to retrain their barista's how to make the ideal cup-o-joe. I'm not sure I really care how good the coffee is at these places, but for those willing to pay several dollars for what used to cost less than 50 cents in most diners, I'm sure the extra effort on quality improvement and improving the overall customer experience is greatly appreciated (unless you really needed a cup of coffee during the 2 hour window they closed all the stores)!
So I work in healthcare (for those of you just passing through) and in our little seminars various stories were told of patients who had both good and bad experiences in hospitals and we looked at what made the experiences good and what made the others unfortunate. One thing that really struck me as common in all of the bad experiences was that the patient (or relative; in some cases the actual patient had died) felt ignored and unimportant to their caregivers. Generally it seemed to be a culture rather than the actions of just one employee with a bad attitude. Even when things go wrong, the patients that felt their caregivers cared and were willing to spend the extra time to keep the patient informed and instill a little confidence that their needs are important will always rave about the way they were taken care of. The patients that do not feel the staff is interested in their wellbeing will generally complain about even minor inconveniences which might even be a necessary part of their care.
As someone not directly involved in patient care I find it easy to come to such conclusions, easy to point them out to those around the table who do have direct patient contact consistently, but also realize that I don't know the whole story about staffing concerns in individual patient care environments in our organization and the specifics of how best to address them.
Still, I was able to identify what efforts we bring to the table from the ancillary arts that do contribute to creating ideal outcomes. Overall they are not new concepts to us. We look out for mislabeled specimens, changes in lab values that could be erroneous, orders that are strange or confusing and communicate those problems to those directly responsible for the patient's care for clarification or simply to inform.
What I came away with was a sense of hope that there will be more focus in our organization on quality improvement and hope that this emphasis will trickle into my department hopefully so I feel less frustrated by the current stresses that hinder my ability to focus on the quality of my own work.
On that note, it is official, I have a new boss. Look forward to meeting the guy and hopefully eventually having a chat about what I see and what I would like to see in our part of our wonderful not-for-profit organization :)
peace,
b
posted by b hill at 8:54 AM
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