A dear friend recently lamented about a recent visit to McDonald’s. She stopped in to order and pick up a meal for her parents. Once inside, she noticed how empty it felt, with kiosks replacing people to take orders and handle payment. Nobody greeted or thanked her when she picked up her order, which had been placed on the counter by an employee who disappeared as soon as they dropped it off. “It was awful,” she told me.
Contrast this with Chick-fil-A, another fast-food chain that prides itself on customer service. Walk inside and you are warmly greeted as you order and receive your meal. The lines both inside and at their drive-thru can be insanely long at our local outlet.
In the quest for efficiency, automation can backfire when it comes to how it impacts the customer experience. This unintended consequence shows up in the numbers: The average annual sales at a Chick-fil-A ($6.7 million) is nearly double that of a typical McDonalds ($3.6 million). This is even though Chick-fil-A is closed on Sunday, a long-held tradition to give employees at least one day off each week. Chick-fil-A deserves credit for proving that customer service can be a competitive and financial advantage in a notoriously competitive and cut-throat industry sector.
My takeaway: For some people, speed of delivery (and cost) may be all that matters. But for many, how they are left feeling at the end of the encounter matters much more.
The drive for efficiency is key in the modern medical practice. But as “Mickey Ds” has shown, you can go too far.
The litmus test I use for automation is a simple binary question: Will it improve the patient experience? Customer service guru John DiJulius said long ago that 85% of our human interaction has been replaced by tools ranging from ATMs to Self-serve gas pumps to websites and apps. “You can go for days without interacting with another human being,” he once shared with me. That makes me sad.
Patients coming to your practice are craving human interaction – part of the 15% that remains in our daily interactions. Keep this in mind as you look for ways to be more efficient. A warm greeting on the telephone and upon arrival can go a long way to setting the tone for a great visit. That may be more expensive to provide, but the PX-centric practice understands there is no substitute. There’s no warmth in a phone tree or a check-in kiosk. Indeed, automation comes at a cost.
