What will I learn in Customer Service in Healthcare Training?
Your attitudes, manners, and facility amenities are as necessary to patients as the treatment processes. From the patient’s perspective, healthcare is just as much a consumer-focused service as other service industries. You will learn how to optimize patients’ experiences just as business operators in retail stores and banks, colleges, and universities, and the travel industry do for their customers.
It is safe to say, most healthcare facilities you deal with fail to deliver superior customer service. No one was born knowing this skill…it is a learned trait. You cannot expect to provide the kind of customer service that wows your patients if you do not train to do so.
In Module One, you will learn who we are and what we do, who are our customers, what customer service is, the ten rules of great customer service, who are customer service providers, types of customer service, how the best companies deliver superior customer service, and why customers leave a provider.
In Module Two, you will learn how to establish your attitude, how to be in the know, behavior that turns-off patients, what you can do right away to improve customer service, and courtesy counts.
In Module Three, you will learn communication skills, how to provide excellent service through effective communication, listening skills, seven ways to listen better, asking good questions, verbal communication skills, and the seven c’s of communication.
In Module Four, you will learn how to identify and address patient needs, understanding the patient’s situation, staying outside the box, meeting the basic needs of healthcare customers, meeting the special needs of healthcare customers, going the extra mile, and measuring your customer efforts.
In Module Five, you will learn how to maintain happy patients, follow up, address complaints, what patients do not want to hear, the L.E.A.R.N. model for handling complaints, turn difficult patients around, and recovering from a service breakdown.
In Module Six, you will learn in-person customer service, dealing with at-your-desk requests, the advantages and disadvantages of in-person customer service.
In Module Seven, you will learn giving customer service over the phone, telephone etiquette, handling complaints by phone, and the advantages and disadvantages of telephone communication.
In Module Eight, you will learn to provide electronic customer service (texts and emails), the advantages and disadvantages of electronic communication, understanding netiquette, tips and tricks, and how to eliminate electronic ping pong.
In Module Nine, you will learn how to recover difficult patients, steps to effectively handle difficult patients, de-escalating anger, establishing common ground, setting your limits, and managing your own emotions.
In Module Ten, you will learn to understand when to escalate, dealing with vulgarity, coping with insults, and dealing with legal and physical threats.
This course is offered for each level of customer service:
- This two-day class examines who we are and what we do as a healthcare provider for the customer service representative. We analyze our attitude and communications skills and take a hard look at what our customers need. We learn customer service skills, whether delivered in person, over the phone, or electronically. Finally, we learn how to handle complaints and challenging patients.
- For managers, we discuss how to manage the customer service program to build a motivated customer service team.
- For policymakers, we examine how company policies can impact customer service. In the vast majority of cases, company policies are responsible for customer dissatisfaction. Policies that are made for what is most convenient and/or profitable for the company, with little consideration on how they impact the customer relationship, can have a devastating impact on customer retention resulting in declining sales. Poor customer service policies will also affect employee retention. Employees consistently forced to deal with irate customers will soon seek employment elsewhere.