Terri Capatosto is an assistant vice president of communications at McDonald’s Corporation, based in Oak Brook, Illinois. She oversees the customer satisfaction and media relations departments.
The top-level managers at Quality Care have spent a good deal of money investigating the merits of a new automated reception system and the possible reactions of customers, but they need to do more research to determine if installing such a system would be a good strategic move for their business. Overall, they don’t yet have a solid understanding of the system’s potential effect on profitability and efficiency. Therefore, I would recommend that they invest just a little more money on a trial test before making a choice one way or another.
First, Moulter should select a test location and resurvey the customers there, making sure that the survey questions clearly isolate the reception function from the rest of the health care experience. Right now, it seems that Quality Care’s customers have been confronted with the whole range of possibilities (“it will check you in, and it will take your blood pressure, and it will weigh you, and it will schedule your next appointment”). What’s more, the survey questions are probably too broad. The customers are confused, and that confusion is generating vague survey results.
Next, Moulter should install a model of the system at the test location. A “live test” will provide him with new information on several fronts. First, he’ll find out whether his customers behave as they have said they would in previous surveys. Second, he can measure whether an automated reception process will affect usage—that is, whether customers will choose Quality Care over another provider. Third, he’ll spot potential problems—such as inaccurate data entry—that can be more easily addressed early on. Has anyone thought of how such a system would handle illiterate customers? Or language barriers? Or people with poor vision or dexterity?
Throughout the test, Moulter should keep his customers informed and continue to solicit their input. They should know why he is surveying them, what their feedback has indicated, and how the company intends to use the information. The more informed customers are, the more they’ll feel that the company wants them to be involved in issues that affect them, and the happier they will be with whatever decision the company finally makes. Health care is a sensitive and highly personal service industry. If Moulter decides to go with the new system, his customers should understand why and exactly how they will benefit from it. If he decides against automation, that in itself could be a unique, positive point of differentiation for the company.
At McDonald’s, we went through a similar decision-making process when we were looking into offering an 800 number to field customer inquiries, comments, compliments, and complaints. It was a big-ticket item, and there were a lot of considerations. If you are a customer-driven company, you have to listen to your customers. But you also have to strike a balance between what the customers are asking for and what you can do from a cost and benefit standpoint. We had to find out not only how our customers felt about an 800 number, but also if it affected their perception of McDonald’s, their number of visits, and their level of satisfaction. So we conducted a test and surveyed our customers throughout the process. We kept track of their feelings about their experience with the 800 number and tried to determine if the number helped us recover and retain previously dissatisfied customers.
As for employee reaction to the proposed changes, Moulter needs to reassess some of the internal factors he thinks he has pinned down. For example, he knows that his employees believe that a new system would allow them to spend more quality time with patients. But what exactly will be going on during those minutes that he will save by installing a new reception system? Is there something currently lacking in the delivery of care, something that employees could provide if they had more time with each patient? When Moulter surveyed employees, did he simply ask them if they would like their jobs better if they didn’t have to take patients’ blood pressure? People always want their jobs to be easier—but unless Moulter asks pointed questions that isolate the factors he is trying to assess, he won’t get the information he truly needs to measure. He needs to determine which actions take up the majority of each person’s time at work and what impact the automated system would have on how and when various tasks get done.
Moulter needs to reassess some of the internal factors he thinks he has pinned down.
Similarly, Moulter should rethink the customer studies he has already conducted. His current research seems incomplete. Has he looked at his results demographically? Do women tend to like the idea of a new system more than men? If, for example, women make up 90% of Qual