MBA faculty member Dave Ziegler, OD, regularly reinforces to his staff the importance of creating an exceptional patient experience. At each monthly staff meeting, he discusses one of the essential service principles that ensure a great patient experience each and every visit. These principles now are available to you in monthly installments—for use in your staff meetings. They will be emailed to you each month and then archived on mba-ce.com.

Why Patients Leave Us:

Many things we do can cause our patients to leave us. If patients have had good experiences with us in the past and a certain amount of loyalty has developed, they’ll even forgive a mistake here or there. But there’s a limit to their patience and forgiveness.  

This week, a local furniture store lost my business forever. After having purchased many items from them over the years, I finally had enough. I tried to order three mattresses without box springs but they sent complete sets. It was not that big of a deal until I had to fight with them to refund the amount that they overcharged me. Next I had to argue with them about a “restocking fee” for the products I never ordered.  To top it off, they refused to extend their sale price to me and the multiple purchase discount. Where did they go wrong?

1. The furniture store showed no genuine concern and tried to blame me for their oversight. I was more than willing to overlook their error until their unfriendliness irritated me. Make sure your staff are courteous, respectful, and genuinely good people.

2. They were really hard to do business with. Find ways to be easy to do business with. Show people that you care.

3. They said the products would be delivered on Friday, but they didn't arrive until three days later. You should under-promise and over-deliver, not the opposite.

4. They delivered service poorly at every level from writing up the order to forgetting to notify me when the products had arrived to delivering it three days late. There are many places that your patients can go for eye care. Make sure your service is better than the competition's.

At your next office meeting, take the time to share the nine reasons stated in the staff agenda.  Have the staff give examples of times these things happened to them or when it happened in your office. There is a lot to learn from our everyday experiences with businesses that can help us.

Click here to download the November agenda.