Why what you think is happening may not be what’s really happening
Marketing works hard to get the phone to ring. They build campaigns. They drive traffic. They invest in getting potential patients to reach out.
And then what happens?
Are their needs met? Or are they lost before they ever become a patient?
That’s the question mystery shopping can answer—and it’s a question that patient satisfaction surveys can’t.
The Two-Minute Window
An average phone call from someone looking for a first appointment is two to three minutes long.
That’s all the time they need to determine whether they’re going to become a patient.
Think about that. Two to three minutes.
And what we’ve found after analyzing over 13,000 calls is this: Empathy still ranks number one in terms of what helps a consumer decide whether to become a patient or make an appointment.
Yes, appointment access matters. It’s a problem all over the country. People are concerned about it, and they should be.
But when we look at the data, 38% across both primary care and all specialties shows that empathy is the most highly correlated factor with whether someone will return as a patient or recommend your organization.
Are people paying close enough attention to those two to three minutes?
What Mystery Shopping Reveals
Mystery shopping tells you things that patient satisfaction surveys simply can’t. Because surveys only capture feedback from people who actually became patients. They tell you about “the ones who stayed.”
Mystery shopping tells you about “the ones that got away.”
Here’s what we discover through mystery shopping that you won’t find in a survey: What you think is happening may not be what’s actually happening.
I worked with a large health system whose staff was inundated with phone calls. They were completely overwhelmed. Patients were frustrated. So were employees. When patients said, “I have to wait three weeks for an appointment,” the staff response was: “Just keep calling back. You can call every day and see if something opens up.”
There was no cancellation list. No automated way to get those patients booked into an appointment. One person said they had sticky notes all over their monitor. Another said that was too much hassle.
When I mentioned my concern that they didn’t have cancellation alerts in their software during training, everyone agreed. “No, we can’t do that.” But then, their boss who was also in the room, said: “Wait a minute. What are you talking about? We have this capability!”
Nobody knew it existed.
We traced back to see how this disconnect occurred. “Who trained you?” “She did,” one said pointing to a peer. “Who trained you?” “She did,” said another pointing to another peer. The misconception was driven through oral history. The software capability had been completely lost because of how people trained each other.
Mystery shopping can help to unearth these issues, offering an opportunity to find the disconnects—and fix the issues. Sometimes it’s policy. Sometimes it’s the perception of policy. Sometimes it’s individual staff preference. All of these can determine whether that potential patient moves forward or walks away.
Mystery Shopping Isn’t an “I Gotcha!”
One of the most common concerns we hear about mystery shopping is: “Isn’t this just about trying to catch people doing something wrong?”
No. In fact, mystery shopping doesn’t just unearth the problems. It can also unearth the high performers.
When we do a large project, we look for people who are achieving great results. These are the people who should be training the next generation.
Importantly, mystery shopping shouldn’t be viewed as something punitive. It should be viewed as diagnostic. Part of quality assurance.
It tells you what’s working, what’s not, and who’s already doing it right. It also gets at both facts and feelings. The fact is that the patient must wait four weeks for the appointment, but what makes it richer is learning how they feel about the wait and whether or not they were offered any alternatives at one of the other practices.
What Surveys Can’t Tell You
Patient satisfaction surveys are valuable. They help you understand the experiences of current patients. But they can’t tell you:
- Why potential patients never scheduled
- What happened in those critical two to three minutes
- What staff is actually saying versus what you think they’re saying
- Which processes are broken in ways that drive people away before they ever become patients
- Who your star performers are that everyone else should learn from
That’s what mystery shopping reveals.
When you’re investing heavily in marketing to get that phone to ring, doesn’t it make sense to understand what happens once someone calls? Because if marketing gets them to the door and the experience drives them away, you’re pouring money into a system with a leak you can’t see.
Mystery shopping shows you the leak.
Then you can fix it.
The examples here focus on mystery shopping calls. Patient visits using trained mystery shopper reveal invaluable information about the experiences with clinicians and operations.
Want to learn more about how Baird Group’s proprietary mystery shopping can crack the code on your patient experience? Schedule a call today.
