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It’s time to see what your potential consumers are really thinking! Did you know that an unsatisfied customer will do more damage to your brand by telling other people about it rather than complain to you about it…..

In an ever increasing competitive aged & community care market, potential care recipients & their families not only want the right aged care facility or community care support package, they are also demanding superior customer service.

Customer Experience audits help providers understand the experience the potential care recipients & their families receive when they are making new enquiries.

These audits are an effective and reliable way to measure the experience that your potential new customers encounter.

Finding out what service potential care recipients receive from your local competition will also go a long way to help you evaluate your own customer service standards.

The HDR Group offers a wide variety of customised customer expectation auditing experiences. You will see your organisation through a consumer’s eye.

Our Difference: We are industry specific & we are passionate about customer service excellence.

The people we employ as customers experience auditors have sector experience & knowledge.

Very wise words from Peter Schultz (Motivational Speaker and Businessman)

Today is World Elder Abuse Awareness Day.

The day is aimed at focusing attention on the physical, emotional and financial abuse of Elders. FMC Mediation and Counselling have just released an Elder Abuse Discussion Paper.

The paper is based upon FMC’s experience of providing front line response to older people affected by Elder abuse. You can read more here: https://lnkd.in/gaHvFhR 

What is the best career decision you have ever made?

I can hands down say that my choice to become a Registered Nurse was the best choice I have ever made!

I have worked all over Australia, never been out of paid work and my experiences have been vast and very varied!

I have worked in so many different areas and I have worked as an RN on the floor all the way through to management level.

If I knew at the tender of age 18 what I know now, I would still make the same decision.

If you would like to have a confidential chat about your career, I would love to hear from you.

Why is that 36 homes have been flagged as “serious risk” to residents during 2017/18 (39 serious risk findings from 1 July 2017 to 30 April 2018).

165 facilities have failed at least one accreditation standard.

The previous financial year had 22 and only 2 in the year before.

Why is the industry seeing such an increase in serious risk?

Is it because of:

• Tougher and more frequent Quality Agency review audits
• A shortage of suitably qualified & trained workforce
• Tight Budgetary pressures
• Poor Leadership
• Absence or lack of suitable IT systems to improve efficiency and communication or
• Insufficient Clinical Governance and oversight?

A very hot topic that everyone is talking about at the moment is about mandating staff ratios in aged care facilities.

Do you think this is the answer to reducing risk?  Is it achievable or unsustainable?

I have worked in aged and community sectors for over 15 years.

One thing that is very evident is that everyone who has worked in the industry has a ‘war story’.

If it hasn’t happened to them, they know someone that has been effected by poor leadership.

Leading a team is not just about providing direction and delegating work.

Truly effective leaders need to recognize the unique strengths of each team member and really optimize all those natural talents.

It’s all about listening, paying attention, identifying each person’s strength and then managing around those essential skills.

Grow your own!

You may just see increased productivity, improved performance and higher employee engagement and retention.

The transition to the new Aged Care Quality Standards are expected to commence from 1 July 2018, with assessment against the new standards commencing from 1 July 2019 (12 month transition period).

The new Aged Care Quality Standards (draft) consist of 8 standards with a total of 42 requirements.

The new standards focus on quality outcomes for care recipients rather than provider processes.

The transition period will require providers to align their system, policies & practices with the new standards & a great deal of support for staff will be required to ensure that they understand the requirements of the new standards.

There will be a strong focus on the way the information about the care recipients needs & preferences are documented & communicated within the organisation.

Effective clinical governance & information management are going to be the key to a successful transition!

The Question is…..How will your service support care recipients to exercise choice & independence & make decisions about their own care & the way that care services are delivered?

Do you have a clinical governance framework that is simple to use & easily maintained?

Is a Centralised Admission Process (Call Centre) the best way to attract potential care recipients into your Aged Care Organisation?

 

To make an enquiry about full time residential aged care is a tough thing to do…it means that someone you love is no longer able to care for themselves or you are no longer able to care for them at home.

 

When potential customers are starting the search for a residential aged care facility, they are emotional and possibly very fragile and vulnerable. They are looking for the best nursing home with all facilities and infrastructure that can meet their loved one’s physical care requirements, support their emotional needs and of course deliver genuine consumer directed care. They quite simply want to know, “what is on offer?”.

 

An aged care client (“a large Not-for-Profit”) recently approached The HDR Group to understand if the centralised process they set up for ‘Cost Efficiency’, was meeting their potential customer expectations.

 

The results were not great. In fact, we are not going to sugar coat it…. they were terrible.

 

We contacted the centralised number provided on the company website and we advised the call centre consultant that we were enquiring about a particular facility. We provided a detailed overview of the situation (e.g. an elderly female requiring residential aged care placement following a fall and all of their current care requirements). The consultant at the contact call centre asked for a myriad of contact details and finally the last thing they asked was, the name of the ‘potential care recipient’.

 

What came next really did shock us. We were told to ‘be as honest as possible’ and a full care assessment over the phone was conducted. We were asked questions that we had already provided in the overview of the situation. The call centre consultant asked if we thought the potential care recipient was a falls risk (we had already advised the potential care recipient was in hospital following a fall), if could she ‘wipe herself’ after she went to the toilet and if she ever became physically or verbally aggressive if staff tried to help her? We could go on and it did as an unpleasant experience for another 15 minutes…

 

During this 15 minutes of what felt like was an interrogation and not an assessment, did the call centre consultant call us by our name that we had provided or refer to the potential care recipient by their name. They were simply ticking off all the boxes on their “phone pre-assessment”.

 

At this stage, we advised again, that we had just rung to find out about more about the facility and what was on offer. The Call centre consultant said she was unable to answer any information about what the facility had to offer and she would put me through to the facility.

 

We were put through to the facility and the lady that answered the phone said she was unable to provide any information about the facility and that she would provide me the admissions officer phone number. Now if only she could find it? A painstaking 3 minutes later, the number was provided. We again advised that we were really just after some information about the facility and what was on offer. She advised all meals were provided, there was a dementia wing, 2 bus trips a week and one respite bed that would be becoming a full-time bed in July. That was it. We were not offered a tour, an application or any advice on the waiting list.

 

So we called the Admissions Coordinator and guess what, it was the wrong number……

 

Would you admit your loved to this facility or this organisation based on this experience?

 

Do you know what your potential customers think of you? Well, this client now does.

 

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?

 

Sexual harassment can take many different forms including (but not limited too) suggestive comments or jokes, sending sexually explicit emails (obscene communications), displaying screen savers of sexually implicit nature to unwelcome touching, taunts of a sexual nature, intrusive questions or about your private life and physical and/or sexual assault.

I am currently working on some policies and procedures for an organisation that want to make a clear statement about their zero tolerance stance sexual harassment. They want to ensure that they portray a tough stance based on the law, but also with a contemporary vision that represents the values of society and moral compass.

I would love to hear your thoughts of when you feel that a conversation and/or actions cross the line and someone’s actions becomes unacceptable behaviour to you and/or your organisation. I look forward to hearing your feedback below.

Image Credit: www.quickanddirtytips.com

#metoo #sexualharassment 

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?