Since client relations is the thing that excites me the most in the practice, I tend to monitor it and critique it frequently. Most recently I had a training session with my staff on the unspoken word. It started when I watched a discharge take place at the front desk. The client had already met in the exam room with the technician and now was at the front desk paying for the services. The client service member reviewed the services that were checked off on the travel sheet against those on the invoice. She didn't miss anything or say anything wrong. In the middle of this process the client answered a cell phone call. Now at first I thought she was just rude, as did my client service member, but as I continued to watch I could see her body language was not of a happy client who was just rude and took a phone call. Her spoken word also gave some clues. So after the client was finished and left I pulled the client service person aside and asked for her take on what had just transpired. She gave me the play by play, not knowing I had been watching, and her version was that everything was fine except the client was rude and took a call right in the middle of her talking. I asked her if she thought the client was frustrated or upset about her bill or the visit. The team member told me no. Next, I gave her my version of what I witnessed. I asked her if she noticed that the client never looked her in the eye - even before the cell phone rang. She hadn't noticed. I did though. Mrs. Jones never once looked at the client service person. She looked down, around at other clients waiting in the reception area, staff walking by and her dog pulling at the leash and her arm. I noticed that. I asked the client service person if all the client's questions were answered during this visit. She said that they had been. The reality? Maybe not since the client service member never asked her (our protocol states she asks!). I asked my loyal team member if she noticed that Mrs. Jones sighed a lot? She hadn't...but Mrs Jones did!
So my next step was to call Mrs. Jones. I explained who I was and that I was calling to ask about her experience at our practice today. (I call it an experience because it should be!) Laughing Mrs. Jones was very friendly and told me that she left our practice today a bit frustrated. It seems that she came in with a complaint of "shaking her head". Yes, her dog Spike was shaking her head. I asked her if she would be willing to share with me the reasons for her frustrations. Here they were:
1) Spike, though maybe a masculine name, was a girl. Client frustration? Every team member, DVM included, who interacted with Spike on this day called Spike a HE!
2) Shaking her head didn't seem like a $150 visit to the client. It was in fact a $150 bill though and Mrs. Jones felt that was a "bit high". I asked her what the doctor did today and she told me this, "He didn't do much. He looked in her ears and said something about yeast and bacteria, some test EBA and some coccidia thing." Let me back track here and tell you that most times I find a client frustrated with a bill I find a client who didn't see the value in what we did. Their problem? Most certainly not!!! Our problem!!!!! This was the case here. I talked to the doctor and looked at his travel sheet. In fact, nothing was a full physical examination. He checked Spike over head to toe but since he didn't verbalize each step, Mrs. Jones didn't know he did it. Her view? "He pet Spike." He sure did but that was really him petting over Spike to check for lumps and bumps. He pet Spike while he listened to her heart. Yes he did look in the ears and that EBA was really an EDA (Ear Discharge Analysis). Mistake #2 - don't speak in terms the client doesn't know. Mrs Jones didn't know what an EDA was or what it was looking for. She was actually quite interested once I took the time to explain it to her. Mistake #3 - all those things the doctor found. It was not coccidia - it was cocci. Yes there was yeast and baceteria but again that wasn't explained to Mrs. Jones. She was not told the differences and that different ear medications cover different things so she just thought we jacked up her invoice by adding a "ton of medications."
3) Ear appointments are a frequent item of contention at our practice. I think it is because the client thinks it is a simple thing that requires, at best, a simple, single medication. Our doctors know differently. They most often run the EDA, they frequently use the video vetscope to see inside the ear canal and there are often a few different medications. We know this and we had a plan in place for just this thing but we didn't use it. We didn't show her the ear canal on the vetscope screen. We didn't print her photos. We didn't give her the handout on the ear canal, how to administer meds and what an ear infection is. At discharge, by this time she was already angry, we rattled off, once again, all those things she just heard but didn't understand which only frustrated her more. (hence the no eye contact, cell phone call and many sighs). We had a chance to fix this by asking if she had any questions or if she understood everything that took place in her visit today...but we didn't.
So you see what happened here? We missed the non verbal cues that were screaming at us that we dropped the ball and that Mrs Jones was going to leave and maybe never come back...she certainly wasn't coming back for the recommened medical progress exam in 2 weeks. People often tell you they are fine when most certainly everything about them is screaming that they are not fine. Read those cues. Act on those cues. Fix the issues or you risk losing your clients.
Mrs. Jones is now happy. She asked me how I knew something was wrong. I told her about all the non verbal cues I witnessed. She chuckled and told me how perceptive I was and then she said she was also good at reading them and that at that point she knew I was smiling while talking on the phone with her. Of course I was. That is rule number one of answering the phone at my practice!
Donna
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