How to improve customer service

Many hospitals try to improve customer service by having customer service classes.  They say that patients are happier when nurses and respiratory therapists are happier.  But I like to think that common sense says that customer service classes just add to the stack of things we have to do, and are more likely to only make us more unhappy. 

It's true.  So a better way of making your staff happier (I'm directing this to you bosses who read the RT cave) is to do the following:

• Increase pay (if possible)
• Increase benefits (if possible)

Surely you may not have control over the above, the following alone may work just fine:

• Create protocols
• Encourage nurses to call RT for their opinion, instead of ordering them to do something
• Encourage nurses to call RT for dyspneic patients prior to calling doctor
• Encourage doctors to respect RTs, and understand that we are well educated and capable
• Back us up when things go wrong
• Smile when we are around
• Don't just hoard us when we get to work with a list of demands and things to do and things we did wrong the last time we worked.
• Let us know what we did right.
• Compliment us
• Talk to us as people as opposed to just robots doing a task
• Encourage doctors to treat us as professionals instead of techs
• Treat us with respect and dignity, the same way you treat physicians

There you have it.  Honestly, a simple compliment may work very well to creating a smile on an RT, and this, in turn, may improve customer satisfaction. So don't throw the ball on us, it's a team process that keeps customers happy. 

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