Engage Employees in the Service Delivery Process

The lifeblood of your organization and your brand, your employees are often termed your greatest resource. And they’re your greatest investment, too. After all, they’re the largest piece of your budget—with their salaries, on average, making up more than two-thirds of the typical hospital operating costs.

They’re also in high demand, in large part because they’re increasingly deciding to move out of hospital settings and into ones that provide them with more flexibility and life balance.

If there ever was a time to understand how employees play dual roles, it’s right now. 

Employees are your key asset for care delivery. Therefore, they’re an agent of the organization and your partner in care. You depend upon them to provide an outstanding customer experience to your patients and physicians. You rely on them to be ambassadors of your organizations through the good and the bad. Their overall satisfaction is key to keeping your other customers happy.

So, how do you get them working with you and not feeling unattached from the larger organizational focus? By creating a culture that emotionally supports their commitment and recognizes the importance they play, not simply assuming they know about your service commitment and will just jump on board. They also have to understand what it means to them to be a part of that greater effort.

Make sure your employees are on board with you in your customer experience journey. It all starts with focusing on creating a culture that focuses on the customer experience, starting with the employee as customer. Consider these steps for your organization:

1. Create a strong vision. Make sure the people on your internal team know and understand your organizational mission. Show them how what they do every day connects to helping to achieve that vision. Don’t just assume that your employees understand these things. We think they’re intuitive, but it’s the organizations that take the time to articulate and make visions come alive who provide the greatest of customer experiences. 
2. Invite them to join you in the effort to achieve great customer experiences. There are many employees out there who would like to be involved in some way, but don’t have the confidence to speak up—or don’t feel they have the skills to help. It’s up to you to create a culture that encourages and welcomes their participation.  Make it a point to seek out those employees and invite them to help you. You might be surprised at the willingness that’s out there.
3. Think carefully about how you select your team. Know who’s on your team, who you want and need on your team, and how to consider the best talent to add to your team. Recent studies have shown that 80 percent of a manager’s time is spent with the people who are outside looking in. They focus their efforts on motivating and trying to get them to “get it”, and in the process, leave the other team members on auto-pilot. They still produce because it’s who they are, but think about how much more they could be doing if they had your time and attention. 
4. Motivate your team with reward and recognition. Overwhelmingly, the majority of people say that a simple thank-you is really all they want. But, don’t assume that about your own team. Find out what they want and create reward and recognition that focuses on their individual wants and needs.
5. In order to sustain any culture over time, accountability is key. Articulate your expectations and communicate who’s responsible for each one. It’s nice to all agree that you want a certain culture, but building in accountabilities is what gets you from a dream to a longer-term reality with staying power. 

Understand what your employees need. Then build a culture that supports their commitment and involvement to your experience effort. Select and train the right people for the team. Together, these steps can help you move beyond providing basic customer service and to creating an amazing customer experience.

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To discuss how your organization can earn new customers and improve its customer service delivery, contact us via the Web.

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