Provena Covenant Medical Centre is a 280-bed healthcare facility in Urbana, Illinois. Provena has come to appreciate that quality customer service in hospitals includes more than just patients. Every employee – including physicians, executives, nurses and maintenance workers – plays a vital role in improving customer satisfaction.

Provena has taken a number of steps to ensure that all their employees know how they contribute to Provena's goal of superior customer service. These are outlined below.

Communicating customer service standards

Provena communicates to all its employees the importance of customer satisfaction and that each person plays a role in providing the highest service possible. Provena has established hospital-wide customer service standards to help employees see how they can contribute to customer satisfaction. Provena has centrally set overall customer service goals to improve satisfaction ratings, but lets each individual department establish its own goals. For example, employees in the laboratory have set their own standards for filling various requests for tests within a specified period of time to a specified level of accuracy.

Another method Provena uses to get employees to understand how they contribute to customer satisfaction is to embody a strong customer service mentality within its mission statement. A well-defined vision and mission and a strong set of corporate values help to drive behaviour. Provena devotes considerable time in its mission to highlight Provena's aim to treat everyone that comes to them (patient as well non-patient) with respect and dignity. Provena strongly believes that if all their employees are treated with respect, they will respond in kind to those they care for, particularly patients and their families.

Training for customer service is continuous and is used to reiterate the tenets of Provena's customer-driven mission. Provena stresses that every employee, executive, volunteer and physician is expected to make quality customer service a central part of his or her work. This emphasis begins on the very first day of employees joining the institute in new employee orientation sessions. Additionally, Provena makes adherence to customer service standards a significant part of an employee's performance evaluation. These standards and goals are regularly reiterated. For instance, Provena has an annual Re-certification Day, at which employees review and are tested on all of the relevant competencies for their job, including customer service goals and expectations.

Addressing the needs of internal customers

Employees who do not come into direct contact with patients often find it difficult to see how their work plays a part in customer satisfaction. Provena's primary focus is on the service it provides directly to its patients, yet it does not lose sight of the fact that its ‘customers’ include not only patients and their families, but also hospital employees (clinical and non-clinical) and volunteers. For example, one of the satisfaction goals of the maintenance staff is to respond to all repair requests within a specific time period. In this case, the customer is defined as other departments within the hospital.

Another example is in the setting up of a physician hotline, so physicians can contact administration with concerns they have about the quality of patient care. In this case, physicians are the customers. These initiatives are driven by the clear belief that providing quality service to internal customers ultimately results in higher service quality to patients.

Recognizing superior customer service at all levels

Provena knows that by recognizing superior customer service it helps employees see the results of their efforts. Recognition reinforces customer service standards and the mission of the organization. For example, every meeting at Provena typically starts with a brief period to discuss ‘Mission Moments’. Provena's ‘Mission Moments’ let employees, committee members, executives, physicians, volunteers and others share an example of how people in the organization fulfil the mission of Provena. A typical ‘Mission Moment’ might be sharing a note or a letter from a patient or family member reporting on the extraordinary care they received from a staff member.

Measuring results

At Provena, everyone is seen as an active agent in service quality delivery. The results of this orientation are extremely transparent in the organization's success.

Since 1994, Provena has been part of a regional patient satisfaction benchmarking group. Every year, Provena sets a specific satisfaction improvement goal. This is monitored by the benchmarking agency by collecting information through an ongoing series of telephone interviews with recent users of Provena's in-patient and out-patient services. Provena's efforts have been so successful that, in 1999, they won the benchmarking agency award for the highest level of patient satisfaction among all hospitals in the region.

With healthcare becoming so competitive, it has become increasingly important for hospitals to provide high quality service care. Provena attributes its success to helping employees at all levels to recognize their contributions to quality customer service. This it has achieved by looking to and managing its internal customers.

Source: Friedman, D. H. (2000). Quality customer service: it's everyone's job. Healthcare Executive, May/June, 4–9.