10 Ways Care Organisations Can Improve Customer Service

When running a successful care organisation, your care staff are constantly dealing directly with people in their most personal and often private moments. From companionship to personal care, it’s important to always show compassion and empathy to those you are caring for and adapt quickly to their needs. Here are 10 Ways to Improve Customer Service at Your Care Organisation.

What most companies would consider customer service becomes a way of life for your employees. Whether your care givers are working in client homes or a group facility, they are constantly looking for ways to improve their customer service and you can help by making customer service an important part of every layer of your organisation.

10 Ways Care Organisations Can Improve Customer Service

Here are the top ten ways to continuously improve the customer service at your care organisation:

1) Develop a Company-Wide Customer Service Policy

No doubt your organisation stands on a few core principles like compassion, availability, and the health and happiness of your clients. These policies aren’t the sole responsibility of care givers working directly with customers, but of every employee in the company from the top executives right down to the web developers. Make sure every member of your team maintains a policy of superb customer service and the care for your clients is sure to shine through.

2) Make Yourself Available

You never know when a customer will need to contact you, especially in an industry where aged people rely on your service for their health and well-being. Having a single phone line or support email address isn’t enough, as people will have many different ways of trying to contact you. Instead, try to open as many channels of communication as possible ranging from a call center to social media monitoring to ensure that customers seeking service always receive it promptly.

3) Form Personal Connections

Customers want to know who they are dealing with on a personal level. While they may have a strong connection to their personal care givers, it’s also important that your office customer support staff make a personal connection to each customer they interact with. Introducing yourself by name and even having preferred contacts, such that one support tech always tries to help a particular customer, is a great way to build strong customer relationships and provide continuous care.

4) Know Your Customers

It’s never a good idea to simply guess who your customers are and what they want. Every care organisation will deal with a few recognisable types of customers and real data can be used to form client personas that will help your service teams understand who they are dealing with. When you know your customers including factors like their histories, concerns, and even the dreams they have for how to complete their final years, you will be able to create a truly personalised customer service experience for each of them.

5) Always Seek Satisfaction Feedback

The best way to know how you’re doing with customers is to ask them. You can easily gather feedback by performing customer satisfaction interviews with both new and long-time clients. This will get you detailed information about personal customer service experiences and provide insight on where you’re doing well and how to improve. You can also develop a survey that is easy for customers to fill out and submit to you for a more wide-spread baseline on how customers perceive your quality of service and care.

6) Set and Meet Customer Service Goals

Once you know where you stand today in terms of customer satisfaction, you can aim to achieve certain goals and measure your success as you go. To do this, establish a few categories and metrics to judge your current performance and what can be perceived as success. Once you have a structure for your goals, you will be able to make and implement plans to continue improving your customer service.

7) Make Your Service Information Accessible

For every care organisation, there are always a few things customers will want to know without having to contact a service representative to find out. These include the services you offer, your availability, the prices for each service, and ways they can customise their experience when they become your client. The best way to serve your customers is to make this information readily available and easy to find.

8) Provide Self-Service Solutions

Whenever possible, make sure that customers can handle their own customer service concerns. Issues of scheduling and payment processing are often personal and can change with very little notice based on their own circumstances. You can ensure that your customers never need to wait for a representative to be available by providing online self-service solutions.

9) Empathy and Patience

When dealing with the emotional concerns of seniors and their families, it’s important that every one of your company representatives, whether in person or through remote communication, expresses a combination of empathy and patience. Understanding where clients are coming from and giving them time to explain is an important part of ensuring your customer service stays top-notch.

10) Constantly Improve Your Service

No matter how good your customer reviews are or how often you meet your goals, it’s important to never stop improving your customer service standards. Even if you become the best in the business, why not set a new high-bar for everyone else in the industry to aim for?

Because you deal with many of the most personal experiences in your client’s lives, there’s nothing more important to a care organisation than improving customer service. Learning about your clients and finding ways to make them happy with your service is an endless process of connection, empathy, and excellent care.