This article was written by our guest blogger Megan O’Donnell, Manager of RMS Healthcare here at Research & Marketing Strategies (RMS) in Syracuse, NY. The RMS white paper is based on a HelpScout.net article titled “15 Customer Service Skills that Every Employee Needs”, authored by Gregory Ciotti. This blog post serves as part 5 of a 5 part white paper which covers all 15 healthcare skills. To have the RMS white paper emailed to you contact Megan at 1-866-567-5422 or email her at MeganO@RMSresults.com. 

Here are 3 skills needed to succeed in healthcare (numbers 13 through 15):

• Tenacity – A phone call from a nurse after a patient is discharged from the hospital, hand delivering a chart to a physician regarding a patient with a critical test result,  or contacting a pharmacy to ensure a patient gets a needed prescription. Follow-up and follow-through are critical in the delivery of healthcare. Every extra step that a staff member can take to help ensure the patient gets the necessary care as quickly as possible will keep the patient loyal to your organization for years.
• Closing ability – Always leave the customer happy. While this does not mean that you can always address every issue the customer may have in one conversation or one visit, it does mean that you can and should acknowledge all of their questions and concerns and make a plan of action to address them. This could mean scheduling a follow-up visit with the provider, referring them to another clinician to address a particular issue, or giving them some resource materials to help them better understand a particular issue. Showing the patient that you will continue to work with him or her to get all of their issues taken care of will help build loyalty to your organization.

• Willingness to learn – So now it’s time to take all the skills and put them to work to improve the patient experience. Take out your latest customer patient satisfaction survey results and look for areas where improved customer service skills might help your organization boost its ratings. Work on some of these skills and then see how your ratings change. Patient feedback in any forum is invaluable in improving the overall patient-provider-staff relations.

Megan has over 20 years of planning, research, and management experience in the healthcare arena. She can identify and integrate resources to solve complex organizational issues. At RMS, Megan coordinates all the activities related to healthcare client analytical and survey projects. Her primary focus is in patient experience measurement, which is one of the three targets of achieving triple aim goals. She interacts regularly with the clients and ensures compliance with regulatory guidelines.