Inflexibility with Schedules
The thing that I hate most about going to the doctor is the average doctor’s inflexibility with his or her schedule. You have to schedule an appointment weeks (or months) in advance. Then, when you get there, the service is still terrible and you still have to wait.
This is quite obviously the opposite of what you want to do. You should be adequately staffed where people don’t have to wait for weeks to get an appointment. And if you do make people wait weeks, then they should not have to wait once they get there.
Be realistic.
If you have to make people wait a long time for their appointment, be realistic. Explain that you are busy and that to provide them with the best possible service experience, you need that extra time.
Be ontime.
When you make an appointment, keep it. No one should have to wait more than a couple of minutes once they arrive at your office. If the appointment with the doctor is at 10:00 AM, they should see the doctor at 10:05 AM (or however long it takes on average to fill out the paper work, etc.).
Don’t rush.
There is nothing worse than waiting weeks for an appointment, waiting for an hour in the waiting room, and then being rushed on top of that. Don’t rush your customers once you are there. The long appointment delay was hopefully done to avoid that.
Hire people.
If you are in a business where you need to set yourself apart from your competitors, it may be a wise move to hire people to help. That way, you can see customers sooner. They will appreciate your flexibility and give them an extra bit of motivation to come back.
And here is it a bit of a comical post about what someone learned from tech support.
