GREATER NEW JERSEY SHFSA

CUSTOMER SERVICE INITATIVES

IDEAS, IDEAS, IDEAS

Compiled by Donna Boss following Customer Service Session

November 17, 2011

The following ideas were gathered from participants. Their ideas are listed by tables and in the presentation. They will help spark new ideas that you can use in your operation!

From Break-out Groups

Top 10 List

1. Nutrition information on tray—ideas
2. Nutrition facts about the menu
3. Be Attentive—don’t put off a request
4. Listen more, talk less
5. Communication—write down patient information from phone calls to get it right
6. Focus on the positive even if someone does something wrong; bounce back.
7. Always “we” not “you.”
8. Social networking—suggestions, recipes, tips for health
9. Games to reinforce things; more interactive experiences
10. Highlight birthdays, holidays, etc. to add excitement—and point out customer service
(Saint Clare’s, Joanne McMillian, and others at table)

• Names appear on Press Ganey get $25 certificate
• Gift baskets for service recovery
• Chefs doing rounding dressed in uniform
• Scripting for tray passers
• Rounding at meal times; manager & culinary team (patients love seeing the chefs on the floor)
• Birthday cards on trays & cake
• Carving stations on the floor on weekends
• Made-to-order omelets on the units
• Moved/separated food stations in cafeteria to reduce congestion and lines
• Digital menu board
• Employee of the month—T-shirt (special) and extra day off

(Saint Clare’s, more)

1. New menu for nursing home; upscaling, meet/exceed customers’ expectations
2. External catering, focusing on drug reps and doctors (Morristown Memorial) nearby; breakfast, lunch dinner menus
3. Marketing, Scott is giving out business cards and promoting our catering menu

(Chester County Hospital)

Milk and cookie cart for patients; worked with volunteers to deliver to patients in the afternoon

(Wynwood of Florham Park)

Respond to patient menu changes within 10 days to improve satisfaction and give recognition to person responsible for suggestion

(Saint Peters University Hospital)

• Free seasonal snacks for employees—quarterly
Hot chocolate cookies
Seasonal cookies on patient trays
Managers round on specific floors to get immediate feedback
• Irish soda bread contest
• Gift cards for Press Ganey-mentioned employees
• Menu collection contest
90% receives monthly raffle ticket to win prizes
Farmers market to sell seasonal products to employees
Pumpkin carving contest

(Newton Medical Center)

• Farmers market
• Free meal for employees twice yearly
• Host/hostess program-assigned specific units work 10-hour days and they serve the patients all three meals

(Bayonne Medical Center/ Valerie Plungis)

1. Convert to menu tablet
2. Signage to reiterate that sandwiches/burgers are made to order
3. Learn how to carve a turkey (signage by nursing, cafeteria, emergency stations)
4. Show and tell with pediatrics as to how food is made/cooked etc. with the chef
5. Breakfast for dinner (New menu item tasting/rating with employees)
6. Family tours of dietary department
7. Smaller appetizer-size menu options
8. Customer advisory committee for employees
9. Ask chef to periodically deliver/meet with patient/resident/family
10. Customer reward program, i.e., Dunkin Donuts buy nine, get one free

Tips:

• Elegant dining: Patients served; staff dresses up; served more expensive items
Theme days include music; employees dress to show different cultures
• National Nutrition Month—went into classroom and made smoothies. Let kids touch and smell the food
• One of our challenges is motivating staff without having the means to monetarily reward them. Looking for ideas to motivate staff that doesn’t cost money

Top 10 list: Customer service initiatives

1. Health and wellness group transforming cafeteria environment
2. Wellness Wednesdays (Central State)
3. Menu re-do—Interdisciplinary team input (Summit Oak Hospital)
4. Patient amenities; strategy is for new parents, take home meal for the first day (New York University)
5. Patient amenities, on OB patients, return 20 percent of Press Ganey surveys (New York University)
6. Team approach tech+ prof staff
7. Nursing home: Send a postcard how are you doing?
8. First impressions, dress code; patient satisfaction survey
9. Break down barriers between sales, marketing, service (Nestle/Vitality)

Tips at Tom Cooley’s table:

1. Residents $ on gold card can be used in vending machines and gift shop (UMDNJ)
2. Treating people nicely and expectations of this level of customer service
3. Ethnic buffets at senior living
4. Every Friday entertainment: bands, DJ, ice cream socials in summer (Francis Parker Home at Stonegate)
5. Demonstration station of new foods to sample and see how it is cooked.
6. Ladies auxiliary farmers market, June-November
7. Stonegate sampler—try new items; put most popular items on menu
8. Monthly birthday for staff
9. Wine pairings and cocktail of the week
10. Include night shift in free meals; pack foods for night delivery
11. Take staff out for foodservice worker week social
12. Heavy evening snacks on a rounding cart

Tips (from various tables):

• Newspapers with each meal
• Hand wipes with each meal
• Traffic light concept in cafeteria helps customers make healthy choices
• Managers rounding on dining room
• Executive chef rounding on patient rooms
• Special theme days with live bands
• Keeping room service menu exciting and fresh
• Customer Experience: Birthday Menu
• Employees: take their pictures, acknowledge in front of everyone, empower them
• Service recovery–fruit basket
• Corrective action
• Grievance cart
• Switching to room service
• Accountability—going on floors
• Host/hostess—meal rounds
(Kessler)

• For two weeks in dining room an elevated dining service: 5-star dining; candle lighting with harpist

(JFK Medical)

• Door to door breakfast cart
• Higher end diabetic desserts
• Foodservice concierge

(Valley Hospital)

• Going toward to room service. Upscale, hotel feel, black napkin, visual appeal
• Beverages, moving to premium brands such as Coca-Cola
• Ketchup squeeze cup, easier to use/ open ; user friendly
• Menu changes; more variety; new kosher line/gluten free

(Nkechi-Vivian-Sheryl- Rosalyn)

Enhancing our customers’ experience:

1. Offer coffee/tea to family members of dying patients. Management providing personal service to the patient/family.
2. Revised a continental breakfast menu to include hot items. Incorporated Halloween activities , ice cream social, etc. Revise holiday menu for psych patients.
3. Monthly birthday cake for staff members. Offer breakfast and bagged lunch for family members.
4. Birthday party for residents monthly
5. Wishing well—select 2 residents from raffle and honor their meal requests
6. Employee enhancement–to improve employee morale. Redid the employees’ shifts so all may attend
7. Provide personal support to younger staff members
8. Individual birthday cake and cards to patients/residents
9. Recognition program for the caregiver/employee of the month. $100 gift card and 1 paid day off
10. Offer turkeys for employees during Thanksgiving.
For good customer service:

• Promise only what you can deliver but always deliver what you promise
• Use only fresh vegetables (not frozen) for our stir fry
• Scripting of our employees
(CSE interns: tips for good customer service)

• Smile
• Going above and beyond
• Develop a rapport with patients/customers
Nursing Home tips:

• Hired 3 host/hostesses cor 240 bed nursing home to respond to meal service needs/issues
• Food service supervisor or dietitian a regular guest at resident council meetings in nursing home to respond/resolve food issues

From Donna Boss Presentation:

Moving Service from Extra Ordinary to Extraordinary

4 Key Points

1. Defining extraordinary service
2. Assessing where your programs are/where are you today?
3. Defining the specific behaviors that need to change based on the assessment
4. Implementation & training
YOU!!! How are you enhancing your customers’ experience?
 

Brands (& Customer Service):
Promise + Experience=Relationship

A promise to a group of specific consumers or well-defined audience, combined with the actual experience these individuals have with the brand (& customer service). There is a relationship.
Standards

“If you walk past something you know is wrong and you keep walking, you have just lowered your standards. Never lower your standards.”
–Ed Steiner, Jim McGrody’s first boss in contract management
(McGrody is author of “What We Feed Our Patients”)
Opportunities
Every moment is an opportunity to enhance a customer’s experience. You must be in the moment to make that happen!

Bob Lewandoski/Director, Bayonne Medical Center

Tool Kit for Service Recovery
• Bought at Staples (big enough for 10-15 items)
• Positioned at nurses’ stations, emergency, cardio, etc.
• Staff is empowered to give gifts
• Tracking form
• Gifts: Coffee mugs, $10 gift certificates, tokens

Celebrating Staff Members
• Letters sent
• Group reviews letters
• Presentation: Helium balloons, weighted by huge Hershey bar; $25 gift certificate; applause
• Hospital also selects an employee of the month

Susan George, MS, RD/Assistant Director, Clinical Nutrition/ Out-Patient Diabetes Services, Robert Wood Johnson University Hospital

Take-home Recipe Cards

• Clinical dietitians select & create quarterly
• For in-patients to take home
• Reminder of wonderful food they enjoyed on the room service dining menus
• Patients want more recipes
• Give to their children

Angela O’Neill, Director Nutrition Services, Hunterdon Medical Center

Seasonal Cycle Menus & Nutritional Analysis Wellness Initiatives

• Clinical nutrition manager and nutrition student volunteer analyzed recipes and input into menu cycles
• Submitted article to newsletter
• Also on web page, informational nutrition sheet to assist those using the analysis
• Cycle Menus started in March 2011 & Nutritional Analysis launched in Sept 2011

(Our department was asked to provide the nutritional analysis of our cafeteria menu items to our employees to support the hospital’s wellness initiatives. In order to accomplish this we had to create cycle menus since previously our employee cafeteria menu was created weekly which took time by the chef, director and office coordinator. We wanted to be more efficient and knew that weekly we couldn’t change the nutritional analysis info so cycles were the way to go. We started with the spring/summer 8-week cycle and then completed the fall/winter 8-week cycle. Creating cycles also helped us to assure a variety of menu items and rotation to please our patrons. After gathering recipes and nutritional information on some items from our food vendor our Clinical Nutrition Manager and a nutrition student volunteer over the summer analyzed recipes and inputted into the menu cycles. Our menus were always available to employees on our hospital’s intranet site so the addition of the nutritional information complimented what we already had. We submitted an article for the hospital’s newsletter called  “The Pulse” to let everyone know about the changes. Also on the webpage is an informational nutrition sheet that can assist those using the analysis.)
Joanne McMillian, Director, St. Clare’s Health System
Gourmet Meal & Afternoon Homemade Desserts

• 2 years ago, discontinued room service for maternity and pediatrics
• Adopted gourmet dinner program on last night
• And, tour the unit with tea and coffee service & fresh baked treats from bakery every afternoon
• HCAHP top box scores increased

(Approximately 2 years ago, we discontinued Room Service for Maternity and Pediatrics due to labor reductions. Over time we have received complaints especially for Mom’s coming back that experienced room service. Instead we have adopted a gourmet dinner program free to mother’s and family on their last night and every afternoon we tour the unit with fresh baked treats from our bakery with coffee or tea service.

Nursing and Doctor Staff Involvement in New Menu

• For lobby café
• New menu tastings with physicians, staff & visitors
• Rolled out paninis
• Savory autumn soups
• New homemade pastry items by Pastry Chef Erin Redden
• +++ feedback
• Follow-up: weekly sampling on nursing floors
• Started in October 2011

(We are reinventing the Denville lobby cafe with a new menu and cosmetic changes. To engage staff and get their buy-in to increase traffic, we conducted a new menu tasting with over 40 attendees including physicians, staff and visitors. On November 2nd, based upon very positive feedback, we rolled out 6 new freshly made and pressed paninis, savory autumn soups and new homemade pastry items prepared by our own pastry chef Erin Redden. We received great feedback and staff appreciates the involvement in the menu planning. We are following up with weekly sampling on the nursing floors to increase awareness and measuring success by retail volumes._

Rounding & AIDET Training

• To increase customer satisfaction scores

Initiative: Personal Nutrition Assistant (PNA) round on patient floors during & after breakfast & lunch

• Service recovery on the spot!!
• Started in July 2011

(We completed AIDET training throughout the hospital to increase customer satisfaction scores. One of our department initiatives is to have the PNA (Personal Nutrition Assistant) round on the patient floors during and after breakfast and lunch meal periods. Service recovery is happening on the spot, PNA’s are correcting a problem immediately, it reduces the involvement of nursing to take care of food issues, reduces late trays and our patient survey scores have improved. We can quickly see and manage and customer service issues (don’t have to wait for someone to complain).
Debra Ryan, Operations Coordinator/Assistant Director Food And Nutrition, Overlook Medical Center
Expanded Adopt a Floor Program

• Started summer of 2009
• Designed to engage the management team and the employees of the department with the patients and the nursing team directly.

(The premise of the program of a traditional Adapt a Floor program is to form management teams on specific patient floors to target temperature and quality of food, courtesy of the server, and receipt of diet explanation effectively and efficiently. We’ve expanded upon these aspects to also include; meal rounds completed by our trayline Supervisors and traypassers, daily test trays completed by our Production Manager for each meal, and a “secret shopper” (our Clinical Nutrition Manager) on the units to monitor the diet office’s courteousness as well as promptness in processing diet office changes and late tray requests. Additionally, the management team meets with the Nurse Managers, Coordinators, and Unit Clerks on their specific floors bimonthly to work collaboratively on ways to help each other increase Press Ganey Scores.

The management team complete meal rounds on bi-weekly basis on their specific floors. Meal rounds are also completed daily by the one of the trayline’s Supervisors along with the traypassers after each meal is served.  The main goal of the management team’s meal rounds, test trays, secret shopper initiatives, and nursing floor meetings, is to look at the patient comments globally. We then formulate plans of action on how we can continue to bolster the positive patient feedback and also look at what systems are in place that are in need of modification or stricter enforcement to alleviate the negative feedback. The Supervisor’s main objective is to perform service recovery and make sure the patients are content with our services on a meal to meal basis. They monitor the process from the point at which the diet office was placed up until its delivery. Lastly, the traypassers main goal for their meal rounds is to make sure that the patient is satisfied upon receipt of their tray. Once the traypasser completes the delivery of the all the trays on a specific unit, they go back to each patient to make sure that they do not need anything else for their meal. In the event that they do, they call down to the diet office via their department cell phones to request that whatever is missing to be brought up to the patient in a timely fashion, and/or bring the item back to the patient themselves, if time allows.

Overall, our program continues to be successful. Our program’s results are measured via Press Ganey scores, daily tray accuracy audits for each meal, Supervisor audits, and traypasser audits. We use our findings to develop new protocols and to target which systems need further enforcement to help better serve the patients. The positive feedback that is received, pinpoints areas of which we are excelling in and helps to boost employee morale. The more our employees feel that their work is making a difference, the more incentive they have to continue going above and beyond for the patients.)

Tony Almeida, Director of Food & Nutrition, Robert Wood Johnson Hospital
Dining Dollars

• The newest Employee Engagement program called Dining Dollars.
• Any Director can go to the main hospital cashier and get Dining Dollars and charge it to their cost center to give to employees who go above and beyond.
• This has really taken off and we are seeing approximately $400 a week in Dining Dollars being used.

Security and Safety Week Recognition
• Members of the Security and Safety teams participate in serving on the line.
• Very successful and great recognition given.
• Signs in dining room on line calling attention to this recognition program.

Jill Hanscom, MPA, RD, Assistant Director, Patient Service, Robert Wood Johnson University Hospital

Gluten-Free Menu

• Started the Gluten-Free Menu in February 2011.
• The Gluten-Free Menu will continue to be a part of Room Service Dining at Robert Wood Johnson University Hospital.
• Consists of foods that are absent of all gluten; a protein found in wheat, rye, and barley.
• The Diet Office staff takes the patient’s menu selections, the cooks prepare the food, the Room Service Dining Aides assemble the patient meals, and the Tray Passers bring the tray to the patient’s bedside.
• This initiative is targeted toward the patient’s that have Celiac Disease, which is a digestive disease that damages the small intestine and interferes with the absorption of nutrients from food. People who have Celiac Disease cannot tolerate gluten. In recent years, more and more patients have been admitted with Celiac Disease, and we wanted to offer the patient’s that have Celiac Disease a full menu that offers a variety of foods that are gluten-free.
• Our facility now has a menu that offers Gluten-Free foods that are individually wrapped to prevent cross-contamination from other foods that contain Gluten.
• The Gluten-Free Menu has been very successful.  When a patient is admitted on a Gluten-Free diet, the Diet Office staff will send the Gluten-Free menu to the patient.
• Success is measured through feedback from our patients that needed to follow a Gluten-Free diet and received the Gluten-Free Menu.  They have been very pleased that we offer a full line of meals, including soups that are individually wrapped so that the patient does not have to worry about cross-contamination from other foods containing gluten.

Dawn Cascio, RD, Director of Valley Dining, The Valley Hospital, Ridgewood NJ

Increasing Press Ganey Courtesy of Server mean score by 2.4 points over the past 3 years

• Scripting staff. Our servers must follow a script called AIDET when taking orders and delivering trays. AIDET stands for Acknowledge, Introduce, Duration, Explanation and Thank You.
• To ensure staff is compliant with the script we developed an AIDET Audit tool.  Our supervisors have to conduct 6 audits daily with each employee while they interact with patients.
• Put both the overall Courtesy of Server score as well as the individual Courtesy of Server score on each employee’s evaluation. Because raises are based on merit scores in our organization, how well employees score on their evaluations has a direct impact on their annual increase.
• We set goals for how many times they are mentioned positively by name on the Press Ganey Survey. An employee has to be mentioned by name at least 12 times per year on the survey to receive an “Achieves Expectations” on their annual review.
• We have a daily huddle with our servers and we read all of the positive patient comments to get them excited and motivated for the day.
• Each year we have revised our goal and set our target scores higher than the year before.  This helps to keep us constantly striving to improve our performance.

Jonathan Murray RD DHCFA, Director Patient Food and Nutrition, NYU Langone Medical Center
New Regular and Kosher menu guide
Has improved patient satisfaction.
• Rolled the regular menu guide out in January. Gives information about calories, sodium and more.
Kosher menu rolling out in December.

Tonya Pizzuro, Assistant Director, Barnabas Health, Behavioral Health Center

Improve Morale of Night Shift Employees

• Started November, 2008
• Each year Barnabas Behavioral Health offers and Annual Fall Harvest free meal in October or November and a Holiday Celebration free meal to all employees. The meals were offered during normal lunch and dinner hours. Those employees who were scheduled the night shift would be receive free breakfast. This group of employees sometimes complained it was a challenge for them to participate in activities and free meals to the same level as day shift employees and they began to feel under valued.
• As an initiative to boost their morale and make them feel special every year as the holidays come rolling in, we make sure we let them know just how much we appreciate their dedication to our patients by offering them a special meal all of their own. Cold menu: sandwiches, salads, desserts and fun beverages.
• Each employee scheduled to work the night before the scheduled free meal receives a color copy of this special menu. Their names and unit are written below (similar to a patient menu) and they make their selections and return the menu to us. We tally and prepare each “boxed meal” specifically to their requests and place the items in a picnic style box and attach their menu with a ribbon to the box. We always include special cutlery and a nice piece of dark chocolate that is not included in the menu as an extra surprise for them. At 11, the meals are delivered to each person.
• As an added measure to ensure satisfaction, we prepare extra boxed meals and always have extra of each item on the menu in case of errors or someone changes their mind.
• This may sound like a lot of work; however, we have the process down to a science and the benefit of seeing how special each employee feels as they receive their menu and even more joy when they have their special meal in their hands is worth the attention to detail.
• My current facility size is small with only 100 beds; however, we have been successful with this same event at another facility I was responsible for with 350 beds. A lot of cooperation from the nursing office is required and bed management is great about providing a complete list of employees scheduled for that shift. If there is a change in schedules, we prepare extra to cover our bases.
• This effort has gone a long way in making employees feel special and important.

Bob Ashe, Corporate Director, Food and Nutrition, Bayonne Medical Center
Room service featured on Eyewitness News

• http://abclocal.go.com/wabc/video?id=7851032