For best training results, seek common ground
For best training results, seek common ground
Team success’ is the goal at Crozer-Keystone
When you’ve designed the blueprint for impressive customer service, trained staff accordingly, and even offered some goals and incentives — start all over again. That’s the philosophy of Anthony M. Bruno, MPA, corporate director of registration and financial services at Crozer-Keystone Health System in Upland, PA. He says consistency is the key to success.
"So many times hospitals roll out programs with punch. They’re effective, but then they stop," he says. "They assume people have it. But remember there is staff turnover [and] many other new priorities. People lose sight of the training, and the value of the service gets pushed aside."
When Bruno left his last position, director of health care access management at Philadelphia’s Albert Einstein Medical Center, he took with him the commitment to customer service that earned him the 1998 Einstein Award for Customer Service. (See Hospital Access Management, August 1999, p. 89.)
A recent inservice training program for Crozer-Keystone’s patient financial services and admissions department management staff, he says, was designed to make sure employees were on common ground regarding the expectations for customer service. Even the details of the workshop itself, Bruno points out, exemplified key ingredients of impressive customer service: incentives, recognition, and rewards. "We served a very nice, full breakfast, not just bagels, and also a very nice lunch," he says, "so the workshop was geared around recognition and rewards."
Topics at the workshop, which he presented with Marina Zeccardi, Einstein’s director of service line quality improvement, revolved around a theme of team success, Bruno says. The idea, he explains, is "to pull together not only a team, but one driven by team success. That is, in every encounter we have, whether in our own department, between supervisors, or with another department, we try to ensure the other person’s success. It’s not just cooperation and collaboration, but [focusing on] how to make the other person successful."
The entire program is based on modeling behavior for employees, Bruno notes. "If [managers and supervisors] treat them well, they will treat customers well. You can’t just tell them to do something."
A believer in reminders and educational aids to illustrate his points, Bruno came up with a new tool for the workshop. "Daily Doses for Success: Reminders for Managers" is a list of 24 "simple little things" he says will help managers achieve success and impressive customer service. (See p. 68.) The reminders are on colored card stock in a spiral binder that supervisors and managers can keep on their desks and flip to on occasion.
When Bruno spoke to HAM about the workshop, he was in the middle of another employee recognition event, the annual National Healthcare Access Personnel Week. Different days featured different treats, such as pretzels, desserts, and a raffle for gift certificates. On International Foods Day, staff members brought dishes representing their ethnic backgrounds, he says.
Zeccardi, whose job description includes improving customer service within Einstein’s department of medicine, says she was struck during the workshop with a realization about the participants. "It hit me that there was a common theme," she adds. "In the stress and operational requirements of everyday life, these things [discussed in the workshop] tend to go out the window, yet it’s the customer service issues that brought us to this industry.
"We want this every day — a cooperative air, a friendly environment — but we just get overwhelmed," Zeccardi says. "The idea is just to bring it to the forefront."
When she gave workshop participants the example of how managers continue to talk on the phone or answer e-mail when a staff member comes in with a concern, Zeccardi notes, she got their attention. "How amazing for the staff member it would be if you turned away from the computer screen, closed the file, and said, What can I do for you?’" she told her listeners as she illustrated the action for them.
At that point, she adds, "the whole room went quiet. I said, See the statement that makes, that feeling of focus, of being on the receiving end of that attention.’" Although it’s not always possible for the manager to drop everything, Zeccardi says, an alternative is to say, "Just let me jot off this e-mail, and then I’ll be right with you."
One supervisor reacted strongly to the "daily dose" reminder about speaking to all of the staff each morning, she adds. "She put her hand to her mouth and said, I never thought about it, but I go past a lot of people on the way to my desk and I don’t always say hello or good morning.’"
[Anthony Bruno is putting together a consortium of patient access services professionals to share ideas about customer service and other access issues. For more information, contact him at Crozer-Keystone Health System, One Medical Center Blvd., Old Main Room 301, Upland, PA 19013-3995. Telephone: (610) 447-6104. Fax: (610) 490- 7936. E-mail: Anthony. [email protected]. Marina Zeccardi may be reached at Albert Einstein Medical Center, 5401 Old York Road, Suite 363, Philadelphia, PA 19141. Telephone: (215) 456-8348.]
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