There’s an interesting study that analyzed the physician/patient relationship, addressing the listening issue very specifically. In the study, 51 patients were analyzed to learn how many of them gave their doctor a complete description of what was troubling them. The study focused on that moment when the physician comes into the room and asks, “So what brings you in here today?” And in this particular study only 23% of patients actually fully completed their statements about what was troubling them in response to the physician’s request for a description of their concerns.
Why did this happen? What prevented more than 75% of these patients from giving a complete description of what was ailing them? In part it had to do with the fact that patients were interrupted about 18 seconds into their conversation with a physician. In other words, there they were, talking to the physician, and 18 seconds in the physician interrupted them for some reason: probing deeper, moving onto a particular diagnosis, etc. And after these patients got interrupted, only 1 out of 51 actually went on to complete a description of their concerns.
There’s an important customer service lesson to be learned from this study. Because if physicians, whose job it is to listen to patient concerns—so they can get a complete history—so they can make a complete diagnosis—aren’t doing a great job of listening, what is happening at a call center that has 80% turnover with the barest minimum wages being paid?
This is a serious issue that most organizations face. And it’s just the kind of challenge we explore and find solutions for in our webinar “7 Psychological Secrets of Great Customer Service.”
Related Posts:
Use Truth to Save a Customer Service Experience Gone Wrong
What Does Great Customer Service Look Like?
3 Things Customers Want: Individuality, Understanding and Truth
Mark Murphy, CEO of Leadership IQ
An expert in aligning goals and people to create thriving organizations, Mark leads one of the world’s largest studies on leadership and employee engagement.
Mark’s award-winning work has been featured numerous times in publications including The Wall St. Journal, Fortune, Forbes, Bloomberg BusinessWeek and the Washington Post. His media appearances include CBS News Sunday Morning, ABC’s 20/20, Fox Business News and NPR. Mark has lectured at Harvard Business School, Yale University, University of Rochester and University of Florida. Mark is the author of five books including the McGraw-Hill international bestsellers, Hundred Percenters: Challenge Your People to Give It Their All and They’ll Give You Even More and Hard Goals. Mark’s most recent book, Hiring for Attitude, reflects the team’s latest research and insight into how hiring decisions can align with engagement goals and culture characteristics.
Leadership IQ’s turnaround, culture change, and performance enhancement through employee engagement work has been recognized in a diverse set of industries including healthcare, financial services, energy, manufacturing, logistics, and hospitality. From his roots as a turnaround specialist, Mark created Leadership IQ to address problems in performance before they hit the bottom line.
