Customer Service Expectations Are Universal

Last week I received an email from someone named “Pablo”. No last name, just Pablo. At first I figured it was spam and moved it to my junk mail folder. But something told me I should open the message, so I did. Turns out Pablo is the director of marketing at the Hospital of the University of Navarra, Spain. He had bought a copy of my book—The Complete Guide To Hospital Marketing—via the internet, and wanted to tell me how grateful he was to have read it. He also said it was comforting to see that hospital marketing is taken seriously here in the U.S.

Folks, I’m not making this up! Here are Pablo’s own words (there are a few grammatical and language roughspots, but the meaning comes through loud and clear):

“Sincerely, the best thing of the book is the approach of the hospital marketing. In Spain…people who work in hospital in marketing matters are not respected. For you, hospital marketing is really a branch of marketing, and you speak about with authority, so, it’s very good to read people who think that marketing in the hospital is not for the crazy people, but for the people who understand the hospital context and who know the importance of hospital role in the society.”

Pablo goes on to write: “In Spain, the hospital marketing is technology, technology and technology. We have forgotten the role of human experiences, the essence of healthcare brands.”

The funny thing about this email from a hospital marketer in Spain is that it could have been written by someone right here in the good old U S of A. Unfortunately, many of our hospitals focus their marketing on technology just as Pablo says his hospital does. About six years ago I made a trip to Germany, a few months after the horror of 911. While there, I visited the University of Heidelberg and its teaching hospital. I was impressed that they had technology even more advanced than that in some of our university hospitals. But more impressive was the friendliness I detected in the staff, the cleanliness in the halls, the ease I had in communicating with the physicians and nurses.

Somehow it's comforting to know that hospital marketers across the world are concerned that "we have forgotten the role of human experiences." Wouldn’t it be great if there were international standards for customer service in health care?

'Til next time.
--TMW