This post is written on a personal experience that I’ve had a couple days ago and I felt the need to write about it because it is a good example for those of you starting businesses on what NOT to do with your business and customer service.
I recently went to the hospital with a friend of mine for some pretty severe back pain. Once we spent the 30-40 minutes in the waiting room, we finally get called back, to the care of a nurse who has a huge attitude (come to find out through her talking to someone else, she was upset because she was there late and they weren’t paying her overtime). After we waited for 1 1/2 hours, my friend got to go get an X-ray done on her back. The results were supposed to come back in 30 minutes, they said. Well, we waited for another 2 1/2 hours before anyone talked to us again. After they did, they still didn’t know the results, but they tried to give her Morphine and Volume. We discussed this with a few people, and it all seems like they just wanted to dope her up, and send her home. She refused the Volume, and they ended up giving her 1MG of the Morphine for the pain, and she got very dizzy and they walked away AGAIN. Now, another 30 minutes goes by, and they finally come back and say that there are no broken bones, and gave her the release papers.
So, in this meeting alone, I can see about 3 different things wrong with how they ran their business, and handled their customers. Follow along with me while I break them down.
- Slow Service – When you are priding your company as one that gives fast and efficient service, this is not the way to go about things. Most hospitals will give you a 30 minute guarantee on getting you out of the waiting room and seen by a doctor. This hospital clearly did not hear about this form of service, or just simply doesn’t care. With some faster service, they would have made a better initial impression on us. After all, the saying is “first impressions mean everything” right?
- Poor Attitudes – When you are servicing a client, you must keep all personal matters you are going through away from that meeting. A client is not paying you to sit in front of them and complain about what’s wrong in your life, especially if you are in the business of helping people with a problem (which in one way or another, most of us are). Learn to smile more and complain less.
- The “Quick Fix” – If your business is struggling and you are looking for a way to get back on top, please stay away from the “quick fix”. You can see from the above example that they tried the quick fix by giving my friend morphine and sending her home. Yes, the morphine would have helped the pain and given her a fast solution, but a day or so later, she would have been struggling with the same huge back pain she had the day before. Yes, the quick fix might cure the problem instantly, but 99.99999% of the time, it will come back quickly and the client will be even worse then originally.
If you can see anything else that could be considered a way NOT to run a business that we didn’t cover, feel free to leave us a comment and discuss it with us.
