Applications of Marketing Techniques in Medical Practice Management

Transcription

1 Applications of Marketing Techniques in Medical Practice Management Associate Professor Terry Beed Head, Discipline of Marketing Faculty of Economics and Business The University of Sydney Singapore 25 March 2001

2 Medical Practices and Services Marketing Medical practices, no matter at what scale - and irrespective of their core activities of healing and care - are services marketing organizations and must be profitable to survive

3 What is Meant by Services?

4 The Context of Services

5 The Intangibility of Services

6 The Challenge To be or not to be a services marketing organisation? Knowing what people do in a services marketing organization: defining and describing roles for everyone Matching this with customer expectations Understanding and delivering customer satisfaction

7 Marketing defined... Marketing is a total system of business activities designed to plan, price, promote and distribute want-satisfying goods and services to present and potential customers --Stanton, Miller and Layton (1988), Fundamentals of Marketing, McGraw Hill

8 Marketers do: Marketing strategy Planning new product and services Budgeting and forecasting Production scheduling Inventory management Marketing research Assembling and interpreting sales statistics and other internal data bases Collecting and interpreting primary and secondary marketing data by surveys and other investigative methods Modeling and simulating tactics and strategies to predict outcomes

9 Marketers do... Marketing communications Advertising Publicity Public relations Sales promotion and merchandising Personal selling and Customer relations Micro and Macro Marketing Scale of firm varies from small to large Geographic scale varies from local to international

10 Marketing Involves Finding out what our consumers want Planning and developing a service that will satisfy those wants; Determining the best way to price, promote and distribute that service Delivering customer satisfaction

11 Customer Satisfaction The competitive battleground of marketing is customer satisfaction You can t have customer satisfaction without employee satisfaction studies show there is a direct relationship between how staff feel they are treated by the organization and how they in turn treat customers

12 And you can t have employee satisfaction without quality management this raises the need for clear and unequivocal role definition!

13 Customer Focus From this: Focus on pleasing immediate supervisor CEO Senior management Middle management Front line staff

14 Customers To this A focus on the customer

15 -- Albrecht. K. (1988) At America s Service, Dow-Jones Irwin, Illinois

16 Service Profit Chain

17 Worldwide Pursuit of Customer Satisfaction and Quality Processes History and motivation: customer satisfaction and quality Localized at first; industry specific trends International standards: ISO Regulatory models Suppliers reactions Academics: 20,000 papers published

18 Quality and Customer Satisfaction Quality has two dimensions*: Fitness for use: does the product or service do what it is supposed to do? Does it possess features that meet the needs of customers? Reliability: To what extent is the product or service free from deficiencies? *Anderson et al, Customer Satisfaction, Market Share and Profitability, Journ. Marketing, Vol 58 Jul, 1994, pp.53-66

19 A Model of Customer Satisfaction and Quality EXPECTATIONS = f (Prior Expectations & Quality; Other) SATISFACTION = f (Actual Quality, Price, Expectations, Other) PROFITABILITY = f (Satisfaction, Other) Note: Other includes prevailing economic conditions; firm-specific factors; luck; errors

20 What is a Quality Audit and Why Conduct One? A systematic and independent examination to determine whether quality activities and related results comply with planned arrangements, and whether these arrangements are implemented effectively and are suitable to achieve objectives * The rewards of being quality- accredited * ISO :1990

21 A Case Study General Practice Consultative Committee, Australia proposed that an independent and voluntary system of practice accreditation be developed to enhance the delivery of services and facilities by general practices through a process of continuing quality improvement GPCC thought that accreditation should aim to attain highest quality care of general practice in an achievable and gradual manner provide a publicly recognisable measure of quality in general practice be voluntary but should also have tangible benefits

22 Case Study... be for a defined period be an educational and developmental process and not a punitive one be self-funding after initial establishment costs be in the hands of the profession RACGP (1993) Responsibility with RACGP Federal grant to cover development 15 key standards, broken into components setting standards doesn t mean all practices have to be the same

23 Why Accredit? Benefits of Customer Satisfaction High customer satisfaction indicates: Increased loyalty for current customers insulation of current customers from competitive efforts lower costs of future transactions lower costs of attracting new customers an enhanced reputation for the firm

24 Why Accredit? Benefits to the Consumer Independent expert opinion: authoritative endorsement and credibility Reduces time - consuming individual dialogue through standardised published reporting Seen to be acting out responsibilities to the community of interest

25 Management of Service Encounters The principle of thirds : About one-third of service problems employee-based (failure to follow policies and procedures) Another third company based: e.g. marketing overpromises and products and services not meeting specifications Final third customer based: incorrect expectations or customer incompetence About 20% of service encounters cause 80% of complaints!

26 Scripting the Service Encounter

27 Scripting...

28 General Scripting

29 Service Gaps Model

30 Further Reading Albrecht. K. (1988) At America s Service, Dow-Jones Irwin, Illinois Anderson et al,(1994) Customer Satisfaction, Market Share and Profitability Journal of Marketing, Vol 58 (July), pp McColl,R., Callaghan, B., and Palmer, A., (1998), Services Marketing, Sydney, McGraw Hill Oliver, R., Satisfaction (1997): A Behavioral Perspective on the Consumer, New York, McGraw Hill, RACGP, (1993) Draft Interim Minimum Standards for General Practice Discussion Paper by Interim Standards Working Party Stanton, Miller and Layton (1988),Fundamentals of Marketing, Sydney, McGraw Hill

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