Customer Focus
How to make the customer feel appreciated.
I had occasion to go to the doctor’s office recently. It was for a basic checkup, and since I am a Lean guy to my bones, I want to focus on the visit from my perspective — the customer. My appointment was for 10 a.m., and I arrived there promptly at about five minutes until 10. I signed the sign-in sheet, found a magazine and started reading. At about 10:25 (25 minutes after my appointment time), I was called back to the exam area, where the nurse told me to go in and wait. I then sat in the smaller waiting room for about 15 more minutes before the nurse came in to examine me. This was not the real exam; this was merely a preliminary exam. She took my weight and blood pressure and asked me if I had been feeling sick or otherwise had any concerns. This process of her visit with me took her about five minutes. So on the time scale, I had been in the office for 45 minutes and had human interaction for about five of those minutes.
As the nurse left, she told me to get comfortable, and the doctor would be right in. I turned on the TV in the room and was watching a cooking channel. I sat there for another 30 minutes before the doctor casually breezed in. She didn’t apologize for my wait, nor did she greet me other than to ask, “And how are you today?” The doctor then went through her normal routine of checking a few things on me that amounted to about five more minutes of interaction. She then asked me if I had any questions, and I did not, so she left the room after scribbling some notes in my folder.
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