The Power of Empathy In The Customer Experience And The Patient Experience

I'm aware, as I'm sure you are, that certain positions and industries have poor reputations for empathy and communication. These include airport security personnel and, most maligned of all, telecom/cable customer service staff. (I should make clear that I'm not subscribing to these stereotypes myself, either as a consumer or as a customer service consultant. My own experiences with TSA personnel have been largely pleasant. Likewise, in the cable industry, you can read my writings here about one wonderful employee–Jerry Biggs–at Comcast, and here about customer-focused upstarts in the telecom/cable industry including Scottsdale-based Nextiva, which has gone so far as to trademark the term Amazing Service.)

Likewise, when I’m serving as a patient experience consultant, which is part of my overall customer service consultancy, I spend time devising ways for both frontline and clinical staff to improve their interactions with patients and patients’ loved-ones. Here, one specialization with an (earned or unearned) reputation for tone-deafness is surgery. To the extent that this rap is deserved, it’s understandable.  The appeal of going into surgery as a young doctor is partly its cut-and-dried aspect: you either achieve clear margins or you don’t.

But the people whom a surgeon cuts into are exactly that: people.  And while I would never advise a prospective patient to choose a surgeon with shaky hands or board-validated competency complaints (even if the doctor is sweet as the day is long), the ideal surgeon includes both parts of the package: clinical competence and empathetic engagement skills for interacting with patients and the families who love them.

The full Forbes article can be viewed at this link.