Poor Customer Service - General Comments

Written By:  Andrew Eide

There are three things I have low tolerance for: lying, stupidity, and poor customer service. Poor customer service is usually the result of people being lazy or stupid or a combination of the two. Either way my tolerance for poor customer service is low.

I run into poor customer service constantly. I try to consider numerous factors when evaluating poor customer service. The person may be new to their job and they are still learning. I cannot be hard on them as I have been new in jobs and I understand it takes time to learn the correct procedures.

Another factor I consider is that the person providing the customer service was provided incorrect information from someone else in their organization. In that case it is not the fault of the person providing the poor customer service; it is the fault of the person providing the information to that person.

Here is a personal example. I used to work at a Rehabilitation Facility as Part-Time Evening Receptionist; working Monday through Friday from 4:30 p.m. to 7:30 p.m. In addition to data entry in the patient computer system, I answered phones, greeted visitors, and provided information such as which room their patient was located in, and the direct phone number to their patient’s room, if a direct phone number was available.

I hate receiving poor customer service but I hate giving poor customer service even more. I was not the person who made up the patient room phone number listing. This list was prepared by the Maintenance Department. The list was usually about 75 percent accurate. When I took over Receptionist duties in the evenings I would look at this phone list and notice one-fourth of the numbers have been modified. For instance, most rooms have two patients in the room, one in Bed A and one in Bed B. One-fourth of the numbers on the patient phone number listing would be modified to indicate that the phone number for that room and Bed A is now changed to that room and Bed B. The phone number for Bed B is now changed to that room and Bed A.

Several times per shift I have relatives of patients call and I give them the phone number for their patient’s room and bed. They call back a few minutes later and tell me when they called that number, which I gave them; they reached the person in the other bed located in the room. Now I have to give them the other phone number for that room, which usually reaches the correct patient in the correct bed. Then I have to modify my room list to indicate that the numbers got switched back to the original numbers again.

Trust me that I will have one day where Bed A and Bed B phone numbers got switched and I noted it on the phone listing. The next day I find out that the phone numbers, which I switched the day before, are now back to the original numbers for Bed A and Bed B. Now I have to get the white-out and modify the list back to the original numbers.

The usual reason is that when a patient discharges room, the patient remaining in the room wishes to switch from Bed A which is by the door, to Bed B which is by the window. The Nurses and CNA’s make the bed change. Instead of moving the patient physically from Bed A to Bed B they move the entire beds including the phone for that bed. Therefore they move Bed A to the Bed B position and move Bed B to the Bed A position. Instead of switching the phones so the phone number for Bed A stays with Bed A, and the phone number for Bed B stays with Bed B, they just move the entire bed, phone included. Now you have Bed A’s phone plugged into Bed B’s phone jack and Bed B’s phone plugged into Bed A’s phone jack. Now my list is incorrect and due to someone else’s error I am providing poor customer service and I am not happy about it. The very next day the Nurses or CNA’s realize their mistake so they unplug both phones and switch them to the correct jacks. Now the very next day my phone listing is incorrect again and this explains why the phone numbers on my list reverted back to the original phone numbers for that room and the beds.

The other problem I have is the other Receptionists who rotate with me often do not update the Master Patient Listing we prepare in MS Word to reflect room changes, admissions, and discharges. So I take over the Receptionist duties and I am giving out room numbers and phone numbers to callers which are often incorrect. Without having the patients who admitted on the list or those discharged from the facility, it is possible to tell a caller that a patient is not in the facility when they really are, or that a patient is still located in our facility when they have been discharged. It isn’t that the other Receptionists don’t know that a patient changed rooms or admitted or discharged. They are fully aware of this information they are notified in two different ways. One way is that an e-mail goes to all persons within our facility giving this information and the Receptionist receives these e-mails. The other way is to log into the computer system for managing patients and on the very first page you have the Dashboard which lists every patient activity entered into the computer system. Also in this patient management system you can run a report with all activity for any period of time and it lists the following data:  patients admitted, patients discharged, and patients who have changed rooms. Therefore there is no excuse for the other Receptionists to leave me with so much incorrect information all the time.

My solution is that every time I assume Receptionist duties I print an alpha listing of all patients. I check the list to ensure that patients pending admission have been added to that alpha listing. I run a Dashboard listing and a Patient Transaction Listing and modify the main list based on the changes which have taken place. I then run a listing, from the patient computer system, of all patients, sorted alphabetically, and compare every entry against what I have on the listing prepared in MS Word. I usually find 2 to 6 errors daily.

This month I will be ranting about poor customer service. I will give you personal examples of customer service errors which directly affected me. I am not making these customer service experiences up…they are real and they really happened to me.