Friday, July 02, 2004
A Hospital of Ironies.
I was at Sentara’s Norfolk campus today, with my family, as my brother went through a pretty painful medical process that’s going to help keep him healthy. He had just finished getting CT scanned, and his drip had failed; he was starting to feel pain again, and we wanted to get him back to his room so that the drip console could be reset.
We asked the nurse who was sitting at the desk outside the radiology holding area how we could get him back to his room; she said that “transport” had to do it, and they’d have to be called.
I asked her if she’d mind calling transport. She said that she was on her lunch break, and the gal who’d take over for her could make the call. Then, she proceeded to make a short personal phone call.
When the replacement arrived, she made a call that lasted less then 10 seconds. Transport arrived shortly after to take us away.
Customer service, no matter how well promised, has a single point of failure: in the decisions that the reps make at every point in their days, depending on how they feel. I understand the logistics and the CYA behind our original nurse not being able to make the call—she probably has long days, and she doesn’t like her lunch period to be ruined. But keep in mind that for every one of those decisions, there’s someone, somewhere, who ended up making a mental note… not of the person, but of your company, or organization.