The healthcare industry is comprised of more than just doctors and nurses. From large hospitals to small neighborhood clinics, it takes people from all walks of life to ensure patients receive the care they need in a safe, clean environment. Support staff, health aides, cooks, and janitorial staff are all part of ensuring that patients experience a positive outcome from their healthcare experience.
One of the most important aspects of a patient’s experience with a healthcare entity is customer service. For most people, seeking healthcare is a stressful experience. To combat that anxiety, all healthcare staff members need to have a deep understanding of customer service and have the ability to put ease patients’ fears and lower the stress they may be experiencing.
However, many patients do not feel they receive good service. According to a study on patient experience conducted by Prophet and the GE Healthcare Camden Group, 81% of healthcare users said they were not happy with their experience in the healthcare system. So, this is clearly an area that needs vast improvement.
According to PwC, 49% of executives for healthcare providers rate the customer experience as a top strategic priority. One of the best tools for improving healthcare customer service is skills testing. From pre-employment testing to employee development, skills testing is an efficient, cost-effective way to improve the quality of healthcare customer service. Here are some of the details on ways you can use skills testing to raise customer satisfaction.
Make the Right Hire with Pre-Employment Testing
Improving customer service in healthcare starts the same way it does in other industries: Hiring the right people. When healthcare providers post job openings, they typically receive hundreds of applications, and it can be difficult to determine which candidates have the best Job Fit for the position. Rather than sifting through all the applications, they can use skills testing to screen out unqualified candidates and focus on the ones that are best qualified.
Pre-employment testing helps you eliminate applicants who lack the skills necessary to effectively perform the job. eSkill’s Talent Assessment PlatformTM allows you to choose from a library of more than 800 tests, which are organized by job and subject, and many tests are designed specifically for the healthcare industry.
You can decide which tests are most appropriate to each specific opening. For instance, medical billing tests are useful for front desk staff, but they would be inappropriate for a member of the janitorial staff. You can also create your own tests by using questions from one or more pre-prepared tests or by adding your own questions to better target your assessment efforts.
The flexibility of eSkill’s platform also allows you to dive deeper into the results and look beyond the percentage of correct answers. You may discover that a candidate’s overall score is lower than you would prefer, but that they have high marks in more complicated or specialized skills, which makes them an excellent candidate with room to grow into the position.
Improve Employee Development Using Skills Testing
While hiring the right person is a good first step, the value of skills testing does not end there. Once you have extended an offer, you can use pre-and post-hire assessments to supercharge your professional development efforts, which can ultimately lead to big gains in customer satisfaction.
You can generate professional reports for each employee that identify strengths and weaknesses as well as any skill or knowledge gaps. This snapshot can then be used to guide employee training with eSkill’s Employee Development Platform. You can identify areas in which training will be most effective and tailor your training efforts to each employee’s specific needs to make them — and your workforce as a whole — even stronger.
You can use skills testing as a means of evaluating worker progress, as well. Once employees have completed training steps, you can administer a new test and compare the results to their previous efforts. This allows you to see how well each employee has progressed and whether your current training strategies are effective.
Skills Tests and Employee Turnover
One of the most common complaints in the healthcare industry is the level of turnover many facilities face. This can lead to a significant drop in productivity and cause a decline in positive healthcare outcomes. Naturally, this also affects customer satisfaction.
Skills testing can keep attrition from hurting productivity and workforce morale. In addition to ensuring a positive Job Fit between the employee and the position, skills testing provides a valuable source of support for the employee. This support goes beyond improving the onboarding process by making employees feel that the company is invested in their future. This goes a long way toward reducing staff turnover.
Request a demo to learn how pre-employment testing can help you improve hiring and employee development outcomes and raise customer satisfaction to new heights.