Tips on how to become your hospital's customer service leader

In today’s edition of the MedWrench blog I want to highlight some survey responses from TechNation’s “How to Become Your Hospital’s Customer Service Leader” webinar presented by Frank Magnarelli. Frank has been employed at the Miami Children’s Hospital as the Director of Clinical Engineer since 1990. He is not only very knowledgeable in what he does, but he has also been described as a person who is capable of thinking “outside the box.”  See below for some survey responses geared towards becoming a Customer Service Leader at your hospital.

Frank Magnarelli

What service(s) do you think you provide that is above and beyond the expected?

• Managing customer expectation to align with our capabilities, then exceeding them
• Quality service, on-site response times and excellent follow up
• Projects, new equipment selection, new equipment installation, assistance with alarm reports, etc.
• We teach our nursing staff on the operational use of the Nurse Call system and bed exit features.
• The whole Biomed department works on various projects. We are involved in several projects that don't normally pertain to biomed because no equipment is required. We still sit in on the project meetings and provide technical input.
• Capital Equipment planning, on many lean teams in the hospital, rounding in departments and attending department huddles and training events.
• Accommodating patients earlier than the next available appointment.

What do you do that you feel is unique for the nurse staff at your facility?

• Feedback sessions
• We have late night carrier visits once a month.
• We teach our nursing staff on the operational use of the Nurse Call system and bed exit features.
• Attending meetings with nurse staff and also presenting in-service to nursing staff.
• Very open to educating a nurse on the equipment every time I get the opportunity. They are very receptive.
• Monitor problems with human factors design of medical equipment so that we can help evaluate new equipment the hospital plans to purchase so that the equipment is user friendly for the nurses.
• We issue movie tickets on their birthdays and celebrate nurse's week.
• Give them a quarterly report of service calls and equipment issues during month.

What do you think your department should do differently?

• Provide repair tags to nursing
• Work order lottery for correct & complete work orders sent.
• Involve nursing, report user errors to provide education from it
• Organization of Space and Parts, and reduce storage of other people's equipment
• Push out or eliminate some device PMs per the service history and effectiveness of the PMs.
• Get in on more planned Upgrade services for equipment in use, as well as what might be in the future, ahead of action. i.e.: before it happens 'this weekend'
• Be consistent. Customer service is dependent on the technician, not the department. As an example, giving out business cards to customers is left up to the individual technician. I give out business cards, but other technicians feel that I should not because they have chosen not to. They say that I am setting an expectation that they choose not to meet and this makes them look bad.

*Note: All responses were generated from a survey sent out by TechNation following the webinar.