Do you know what your potential customers think of you? Well one of our client’s now does.
Recently an Aged Care Provider of a standalone facility approached The HDR Group to better understand why they were experiencing significant occupancy challenges and why they do not have a “waiting list”. They had just spent a significant amount of money on a refurbishment and they needed the beds to be filled!
They had a keen interest in learning about the ‘sales techniques’ of their competitors and to see how their facilities approach compared. We used our approach to customise a Customer Experience Audit specifically for the them, based on a potential new Aged Care Resident looking for permanent placement.
Firstly, we focussed on their facility and the results while disappointing but not unexpected, were considerably worse than expected. When we contacted the facility, there were a number of challenges in providing a unified Customer Experience. These ranged from:
Personnel not identifying themselves
Advising that the person we needed to speak to about a possible admission was very hard to get a hold of. They were right! After 3 further attempts to call, we eventually spoke with the admissions officer (who worked full time).
We were advised that group tours were conducted between 1-3pm Tuesday and Thursdays. There were no other tour times available. This all came as a real shock to the Facility Owner.
Minimal information provided over the phone. – Certainly not enough to make us as a customer want to explore the facility as an option.
Following this, we contacted 5 for profit facilities and the results once again were very mixed.
2 of the facilities that we contacted, we were able to speak with the Site Manager, who were both very knowledgeable but more importantly, passionate about their facility. They wanted to know what we were looking for and they explained how they could best meet my requirements. A positive experience that definitely said, “come here and you will be looked after!”
The other 3 for profit phone enquiries were less than average. Overall, there was a real sense of lack of interest in the customer and none of the people that we spoke with really highlighted why I should choose their facility as our aged care provider.
One facility didn’t know if they had any vacancies or what the current waiting looked like. We called another facility to speak with their admissions officer and after 3 attempts, we have still have not heard back from them.
We moved on to NFP Providers and we spoke with another 5 facilities. The results again were very average. Here are some of fails:
- Advised no vacancies so ‘just submit an application’
- When we asked about the facility features we were asked “well what do you want to know? We have a website you know?’
- We were advised we could be waiting 3 months – they didn’t suggest a tour or putting in an application
- Unable to explain how the financials work as they did not understand it themselves
Overall, only 20% of our client’s competitors provided exceptional customer services over the phone. One of these facilities has a very similar service offering to our client and they have no vacancies and a 1-2 month waiting list.
So where to from here for our Client? There is a fantastic opportunity here for them to capitalise on the poor customer experience on offer in their local area and here is how together, we are now going to do it!
The HDR Group will:
- Conduct a full review of their new resident admissions enquiry process including further mystery calls and visits.
- Interviews will be conducted with their newest residents to learn about how they found the whole experience from enquiry to admission
- Customer Experience training will also be provided for all staff
- A full Customer Experience audit will be conducted again in 6 months
If you would like to learn more about the tailored Customer Experience Auditing programs that The HDR Group has on offer, please call Rhonda Withers on 0438 748 846 or email rhonda@thehdrgroup.com.au
How do you fix a problem, if you don’t know why there is a problem?
The HDR Group 