Contemporary Best Practices for Improving Customer Loyalty in Healthcare Industry

Introduction

Following the availability of a broad range of healthcare services in the innovative world, customers are becoming increasingly mindful of the quality of products and services they need to fulfill their demands. The choice of services, costs and accessibility is appearing to determine customer purchase decisions in the healthcare industry. In this regard, quality care standard management is required to assure patients of specific social insurance management. This, therefore, implies that healthcare officers are supposed to work with efficiency in ensuring that high standard deliverables are offered to build and also increase trust between the customer and the suppliers. Health care managers should embrace best practices that ensure loyalty between them and the customers is enhanced by executing contemporary practices centred at building the reputation of the company with outsiders.

Contemporary best Practices and Recommendations to improve Customer Loyalty

Foster Proactive Customer Service      

            Proactive customer services imply the ability to address patient treatment options and challenges encountered inpatient services before the patients pay their visits to the health facility. Social insurance suppliers are supposed to offer quality supplies that meet the purpose of patients visits in hospitals. Loyalty in healthcare organization will be attained through effective equipment supplies and medicines which shall serve to ensure that medical procedures are being conducted with safety and accuracy (Gambarov et al., 2017). The safety and precision of a healthcare facility enhance customer loyalty. The immediate customers of a healthcare facility are patients who expect an improvement in their health after visits and also expect a permanent solution to some of their healthcare practices. Human service suppliers should be highly selective in deciding the type of commodities to supply to healthcare organization by considering quality and safety factors.

Privacy Commitment

Establishing loyalty between healthcare providers and patients means enhancing privacy commitment that every healthcare facility should exercise to its patients. Privacy is the primary worry for most patients as they want their health affairs to remain unknown to the public. Creating a private environment also enables patients to be in a position to share their health situations without fear of being exposed (Saili, Mingli & Zhichao, 2016). The capacity of health officials to assure patients of their privacy during hospital visits expands the doctor’s connection with patients, and this experience offers patients a comfortable experience when receiving treatment. It is also an essential factor of quick recovery (Gambarov et al., 2017). Social health administrators should work to ensure that they adjust healthcare processes to meet quality thresholds and safety methodologies when delivering care practices.

Offering exclusive information to patients

Healthcare administrators are expected to furnish patients with correct and comprehensive information regarding their health facility and also offer correct information concerning the health status of their patients. This element gives more confidence to the patients who in turn, feel free to reveal critical information about their health conditions (Shamsudin, Razali & Hassim, 2015).  Human service suppliers in the healthcare department should act to the tune of patients who should consider specific goals to be able to fulfil the desired promises. They should always be ready to address each and every request from their customers.

Conduct research to assess patients’ needs

Human service suppliers in the healthcare facilities are expected to conduct thorough research regarding patients’ and then aim for specific equipment and medication that attempt to address the diverse needs of patients. Researching enables a quick assessment of the healthcare data and be wary of the exact patient expectations before requesting to supply the equipment (Shamsudin, Razali & Hassim, 2015).  Human service supplier should always conduct research to ensure sufficient knowledge concerning healthcare equipment and how the equipment can be used to enhance customer loyalty.

Increase the rate of service

            Customers require to be serviced faster, and others also need urgent services. The ability to provide services with speed ought to take the act of quality with caution because speed can compromise the quality of service that a healthcare organization offers to its patients (Gambarov et al., 2017). As such, healthcare organizations should work extra harder to balance speed with quality of service so as to maintain customer loyalty.

Benefits of having Loyal Customers

            Cheaper to maintain customers: New customers are said to be costly because of the time, energy and resources required in winning the heart of new customers. Attaining the first deal with a customer requires extensive transactions. Loyal customers are cheaper to handle because they already have the best interest of the company at heart and readily advance to make their purchases (Saili, Mingli & Zhichao, 2016). Retaining new customers requires expensive convincing power which may take time and its success is not assured.

            Less bargaining: The degree of demand for products by old customers is not price sensitive. As such, little bargaining happens as the customers proceed to purchase their products directly. This is because of the long-term successful relationships with customers. This factor enables a healthcare organization to maximize its profits by selling commodities at their exact or even higher prices (Saili, Mingli & Zhichao, 2016). Employees love engaging the usual customers because it is easy to handle usual customers that new customers every other day.

            Less expenditure on marketing: Customer loyalty is an assurance of less marketing activities which in turn reduce an organization’s expenditure on marketing practices. The longer a customer stays with a particular healthcare organization, the higher the chances of them becoming part of the shareholders of the company. Customers that are already loyal to the healthcare organization do not require further advertisement regarding the company’s products and services.

            Customer loyalty also increases employee loyalty: It is established that high rates of retention for customers are likely to result in high retention rates for employees. Employees tend to feel satisfied with their job if they serve customers they trust and love to engage with. It is easy for employees to deal with usual customers than new customers. This means that employees can stay longer in a healthcare organization if the customers they serve to continue visiting the health facility.

Conclusion

Customer loyalty is important to medical services because a health affair in medical service delivery is essential in ensuring good customer experience and outcome. Customer loyalty should be a key consideration for every healthcare organization that focuses on attaining the needs of its patients in the most appropriate and efficient ways. Technology advancement has increased options of reaching out to the various needs of patients and should be used properly to enable and enhance patients’ needs. The most successful healthcare organization will be those that prioritize and personalize patient’s needs to assure good experience and quick recovery of their patients. Customer loyalty in medical supplies, is hence, a critical factor in ensuring quality service delivery and good patient experience for the respective healthcare facility.