Healthcare Chronicles: Without Customer Service, You Won't Have Customers
Healthcare Chronicles
This report originally appeared in the September 2009 issue of DOTmed Business News
There's an old airline commercial I remember. Admittedly, I don't remember it too well . . . I don't remember exactly what airline it was advertising, but I remember the concept. In the commercial, a CEO was reviewing a list of tasks and farming them out to his employees. Finally, he came to one that was presenting a serious problem. He chose the difficult, time-consuming and probably slightly intimidating job to take care of personally. Of course he used the airline (whichever it was) to meet immediately face-to-face with the customer. My feeling is that the airline wasn't too important, but the idea the commercial expressed was. At the heart of the matter, when things are not going well, you need to do whatever it takes to keep your customers happy and then you will keep your customers.
Maybe the commercial has stuck with me for so long because I had a similar experience over 15 years ago. At that time, a customer we had for about a year was having problems with a CT scanner going down. It took a little time to track down the issue, but our lead engineer did get the problem identified. However, the customer's C-level people were not happy about the situation. It's understandable - departments are doing their best to develop revenue sources, so when equipment goes down, it gets attention.
Unfortunately, all the attention they were focusing on this problem was only prolonging the problem. The engineer was answering questions and addressing concerns of those watching the bottom-line so much, that he couldn't effectively get the things he needed to accomplish done. He called me for assistance late on a Thursday night and asked if I could take a flight in to help diffuse the situation. I told him I could probably get there before late afternoon the following day. He responded with an apologetic, "That's not going to work."
Once I understood his situation, I caught the last flight that night from Nashville into Dallas and then caught the first available flight from Dallas at 5:30 am to Spokane, Washington, arriving early in the morning to meet with the clients. Just knowing the effort I went through to see them in person made a substantial impression. The fact that I, as the owner, was there to back my product meant the world to them.
A lot of times that's all it takes - show your customers you care enough to take control of the situation and to take responsibility for any problems. We did get the machine going again quickly. That, combined with the efforts made to show the customer how important they were, kept the relationship on track. The relationship actually continued for another eight to ten years, until they disbanded their in-house groups and moved over to working with OEMs.
The moral here - when it comes to running a successful business, customer service is key. However big or small your business is, without good customer service, it's nothing. Never be reluctant to be in front of the customer - sometimes, a customer just needs someone there to help them through a difficult time.
I've been in the industry a long time and I've seen companies handle things the right and wrong ways. A common attitude with many younger companies is to avoid the problems - if they just get away from the situation and leave it alone, it'll get better. But things rarely get better with inattention. I've seen companies avoid customers in troubling times, when really they should be there sweating with them.
At the end of the day, people do business with people.
Ed Sloan is the founder of ReMedPar and has been in the industry for 23 years. He currently works in the diagnostic imaging aftermarket consulting business. Ed also serves on the Board of Directors at DOTmed.com.
