• Customers who have major problems but don’t complain continue to do business with the firm at a rate of about 9%.
• Those who do complain, regardless of the outcome, continue to do business with the firm at a rate of approximately 19%.
• Customers who have their complaint resolved continue to do business with the firm at a rate of 54%.
• If you resolve the issue quickly, customers will continue to do business with your firm at a rate of 82% - 95%.
• Customers who complain and are satisfied are up to 8% more loyal than if they had no problem at all. 

So don’t be afraid to ask your customers what they really think. Encourage them to tell you if they are less than happy with the service they received from you.

The Irish Health Information and Quality Authority (HIQA) today released the results of a comprehensive poll conducted by Red C on the public’s opinion about the quality of healthcare services in Ireland. Over 1,000 adults were surveyed and there are some fascinating insights into the current state of mind of healthcare “customers” in Ireland. A good summary of the poll results can be accessed here.   

Some of the key findings included

• Over 40% of people feel that the healthcare they or their families have received has been below the expected standards
• Only about a third of these people complained however 52% said that they felt too intimidated to make a complaint and 80% found it difficult to know who to complain to.
• Most people rated funding and staffing as the most important issues when it came to ensuring safe services were delivered.
• A huge 86% said that they believed no-one took responsibility for service levels.

This is a valuable and important poll in the context of the state of healthcare services in Ireland. I understand that HIQA are going to start a consultation on draft national standards for safer and better healthcare services and I am looking forward to contributing to that.

In addition to the poll, I think that additional valuable insights could be uncovered if further service design based investigations were carried out (e.g. customer journey mapping) and I look forward to the move of the Irish healthcare service providers towards a more customer centric approach in the future, as has been happening for some time outside the state.

Eithne Donnellan wrote a good piece about this in today’s Irish Times, you can see it here.

Great presentation from Rajiv Mehta on reframing the healthcare problem.

In a wider context it highlights how reframing problems can help identify potential innovative approaches and solutions.

Reframing Health as more than Health-care

View more webinars from Rajiv Mehta.

• 42% of respondents said that they were service providers, with 30% saying that they provided products and services. In addition, 15% were public service providers. Only 5% said that they were pure product manufacturers. 
• 72% of respondents said that they generate revenue and profits from their service offerings and 13% said that they generated revenue but no profit. 15% generated no revenue from services but these were predominantly the public service providers
• 88% of respondents believe that services will play a great part in their future plans. 
• One challenge that exists is picking the right entry point into clients’ organisations. This was confirmed by responses when asked “who decides what services to offer?” ; 78% said the Owner/CEO of the business decides, with only 11% saying Sales and 25% saying Customer Service or Marketing. 19% said that it was decided by other factors and these predominantly included the Executive Board or a parent company. These findings highlight the importance of getting access to clients at the highest level in order to successfully introduce service design and service innovation successfully.   
• 58% of respondents said that they don’t have a process for designing new service offerings. The respondents that say they do have a process were often from regulated businesses. This lack of process for designing new service offerings represents a significant opportunity for service design practitioners.
• When asked, 68% of respondents believe that everyone involved in the delivery of services in their organisation is aware of their role in the process. This number seems high in light of previous responses and observed practices however there are 32% who say that their employees are not aware.
• 75% said that they ask their customers what services they would like to see offered. They highlighted workshops, surveys and other feedback mechanisms for doing this. 25% don’t ask their customers. 
• When asked whether they believed if their services could be designed better, 80% said yes and 13% said that they don’t know. Feedback indicated that respondents saw problems with processes being too slow and over complicated. They also indicated that more thought should be put into the design of their services, that they need more innovation and that change needed to be followed through on. These are areas that service design can address.
• 25% of respondents said that they would use an external company to help them redesign their services while an additional 35% said that they might depending on certain factors. These factors included cost, market/sector knowledge, ROI and the complexity of the offering.   

It was good to see such high profile coverage of Service Design however there were still many references to products in the supplement instead of focussing on services. Maybe that’s why service design is still at the early stages of adoption….

Here is a link to the Guardian website with all of the articles. Have a read.  

This week in particular Government ministers from Ireland have travelled around the world to spend St. Patrick’s Day in countries as diverse as Korea, New Zealand and USA and to take the opportunity to highlight Ireland’s position as a country with an innovative workforce.

So does the Irish government believe this themselves?

Well apparently they do. As the economy in Ireland has suffered the effects of the global recession worst than most, the Irish government has sought the wisdom and thoughts of her citizens and relations to help move Ireland forward. It is a form of National Crowd-sourcing.

Some examples of this include the Global Economic Forum that the Irish government held in Dublin in September 2009 and the Innovation Taskforce that the government established to provide direction into building a smart economy in Ireland, whose report was issued this week. Both were cases where individuals from many different sectors of the Irish community were brought together to discuss Ireland’s future.In addition, there are other ongoing efforts  to harness the brainpower of the innovative among us, including the Your Country, Your Call competition, which is a competition to “ignite your imagination and reward your thinking”.

So maybe all of the promotion of Ireland as an “innovation island” is not just marketing speak. It seems that the Irish Government at least believes that there is something worth tapping into.