Is Telephone Mystery Shopping A Good Call?

Everyone I know has been on the receiving end of a really bad telephone experience.It may have been a rude employee, an excessive hold time or a total lack of communication. Worse yet, all of the above and then being disconnected!

Retail businesses and a variety of call centers use Mystery Shopping to monitor and improve customer service. The healthcare and long term care industries are also seeing the need and value of this service.

Telephone Mystery Shopping is a service by which a caller's first impression is thoroughly evaluated. The “Mystery Caller” uses a detailed questionnaire with a step by step account of their call. An experienced mystery shopper will provide a well written, comprehensive narrative summarizing their total experience. Forms may be customized to suit your organization or facility, addressing specific concerns or monitoring compliance with policies and procedures. You may also find standardized forms that include basic customer service questions but are designed specifically for the healthcare or long term care industries. The areas evaluated are:

• Basic Phone Etiquette
• Scheduling
• Automated Phone Systems
• Hold Times
• Staff Product and Procedure Knowledge
• Staff Interpersonal Skills
• Referral Tracking
• Compliance with Policies and Procedures

I recently ran reports and aggregated scores of the thousands of medical mystery shopping calls in our database. The most telling questions we include on all our custom and standard forms; "Based on your telephone experience, would you schedule an appointment with this facility? Would you recommend it to others? The results... drum roll please; nearly 25% answered NO.
That should tell you how damaging a poor first impression may be to a practice or facility.

The good news; monitoring scores from the beginning of a mystery shopping program, we have seen marked improvement immediately following presentation of initial evaluations. Busy with the daily operations of a practice or business; employees are simply not aware of the patient’s or client’s perception. Once informed, most are happy to make the changes necessary to improve patient/client satisfaction.

Mystery shopping whether it is a Total New Patient Experience, a Walk-In Visit Telephone Mystery Shopping or Patient Interviews is an excellent means to measure and improve the level of customer service. When presented correctly to employees, it’s a non-threatening process; it is a training tool and a means to encourage, praise and reward employees.

Telephone mystery shopping is a good place to start if you think the phone skills within your organization are less than perfect or you are seeing attrition; it is also the only way to measure the quantity of new patients/clients a practice or facility may be losing before they even get in the door.

Explaining what I do for a living is never a brief conversation and always opens the floodgates to the many stories of the inquirers less than perfect experiences with their healthcare providers. My mother has at least one a week for me; I put her on hold.

Medical Mystery Shopping in the News

Recently, healthcare mystery shopping was in the news again. The AMA ethics counsel is asking doctors to endorse the practice and not all doctors are onboard; view the debate. An Examine your Practice client Dr. James Loden has been an advocate of healthcare mystery shopping since he began using medical mystery shoppers 2 years ago. He made changes based on the unbiased information provided and realized an immediate increase in patient consultations converting to elective surgery and referrals.

Healthcare mystery shopping is very valuable to specialists or "fee for service" practitioners that offer elective procedures. Plastic surgeons, ophthalmologists offering Lasik surgery, cosmetic dentists and dermatologists understand measuring and improving patient care results in increased referrals and treatment acceptance.

Nursing homes and assisted living communities also employ healthcare mystery shoppers to make observations, recognize areas in need of improvement and reward outstanding employees.

The doctors that do not support medical mystery shopping have valid concerns but not all mystery shopping companies practice as they described. Experienced healthcare mystery shopping companies understand “mystery patients” should never go before real patients in an emergency room setting where life threatening situations may present. It is the healthcare mystery shopping company’s responsibility to educate the clients to the danger of such practice and presenting with chest pain or something equally emergent should not be done.

Medical mystery shopping is not about getting doctors and staff fired; we are not there to judge clinical skills. It is about recognizing training needs and view the facility through the patients' eyes thereby improving the patient experience. Many healthcare facilities use mystery shopping to reward staff, catch them doing something right; this creates a positive work environment and reduces staff turnover. Doctors and staff should not feel threatened or deceived by this practice; they should be proud to part of an organization that cares enough to measure their level of patient satisfaction and strives to provide the best possible patient care.