Using the Net Promoter Score
The NPS – Measuring Patient Experience
We always should be striving to provide the best patient experience and one way of measuring this is the Net Promoter Score (NPS). The customer experience is an important part of any business. In a health practice, even more so. In a health practice we are engaging with people in need, sometimes at their most vulnerable and so it is critical that we provide more than just ‘medical’ care.
We need to provide an overall experience that will put our patients at ease and make them feel comfortable. This should start from the moment they walk in the door. If you have a happy customer, they are more likely to return, and more likely to recommend you to someone else. And this at the end of the day – is what matters.
The Net Promoter Score is a world-renowned metric to measure customer experience and it has become our favourite metric for measuring how we are going.
We should be asking ourselves these questions continually…
- How happy are my team?
- How happy are my patients
- How happy are they with the treatment and their experience?
We keep it simple. Asking just one question of our patients … ‘How likely would you be to refer someone to our clinic from 0-10?’
The results can be categorised as follows:
| RESULT | WHAT ARE THEY: | WHAT WE NEED TO DO |
| 0-6 – not really happy | Detractors | Pick up the phone immediately to find out what went wrong and how we can improve. We want to make sure that their experience next time sees them happier |
| 7-8 | Passive | May or may not want to follow up with them to see what you can do differently / see if you can get them to a ‘Promoter’ |
| 9-10 | Promoters | These people love us – they love you – they love the experience.
We can reward our loyal patients in many ways… discounted treatment, tickets to a movie…We send a massage voucher. These are the customers you should ask… ‘would you mind doing a review for us?’ |
What you want in a customer review…
We love feedback and the patient experience is everything to us. In a review we are interested in a review around the patients’ experience at the clinic…
- How were they greeted?
- Were they offered water?
- Did they have to wait long?
- Did they feel they received good service?
- Are they likely to return?
Here are a few pointers to use NPS more effectively in your Practice.
- Make is easy, straightforward
- Understand what the NPS is – a simple scoring metric
- Align your practice towards improving the patient experience
- Coach your team to improve responses
- Get feedback with your respondents
- Create a process to act on patient feedback
- Don’t chase the score – you should aim for high standards always – not just as a result of a score
- Share feedback every day
- Review and report insights regularly
- Identify and resolve any problems to improve NPS
