The one with the patient choice awakening - Ben Seals CEO Thomas Eye Group S2E104

🎤There’s a revolution in customer experience coming “The one with the patient choice awakening” with Ben Seals, CEO of Thomas Eye Group in CX Passport episode 104. What’s in the episode?...🎧

📞When your FIRST call teaches you to love to talk to customers

💡When the CEO hears directly from customers

❗Patient choice...it's real...it's now

🧑‍⚕️Improving financial & MEDICAL outcomes through better patient experience

🩺Patient experience is customer experience

🍌"Banana pudding is my kryptonite"

😲Whoa! Imagine handling the emergency call from a wife scared to death about her husband's immediate eye emergency

💭“Giving that agent the tools and the skills to address the need is the responsibility of our leadership team in the organization.” - Ben

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Hosted by Rick Denton “I believe the best meals are served outside and require a passport”

Episode resources:

Ben Seals LinkedIn: linkedin.com/in/benseals

Thomas Eye Group: www.thomaseye.com

Transcript

Rick Denton: 0:05

You're listening to CX Passport, the show about creating great customer experiences with a dash of travel talk. Each episode we’ll talk with our guests about great CX, travel...and just like the best journeys, explore new directions we never anticipated. I'm your host Rick Denton. I believe the best meals are served outside and require a passport. Let's get going. When your first job was doing tech support for dial up modems, you know, you've got the customer in your heart from the very beginning. That's the origin story of today's guest, Ben Seals, now the CEO of Thomas Eye Group, a large multi specialty Eye Care Practice serving over 200,000 patients each year. From starting customer care for technology to leading a multi location provider of a vital medical service. Ben's got the customer experience skins on the wall. I grew up the son of a physician and a nurse. I knew that medical care used to be with the patient at the center. Sadly, at least in the US, but certainly in other areas of the world as well. Now when you enter the medical world, often customer experience or better stated patient experience gets overlooked at best, actively sorted at worst. However, I'm seeing a turn many individual practices and medical organizations such as Thomas Eye Group, recognize how important patient experience is to overall patient care. As patients become aware that they do have a choice in where they receive their medical care, they'll just like all the other industries prioritize providers that deliver a great experience. And while it's insensitive to talk about money in medicine, the reality is that medicine is a business. Delivery of successful medical outcomes still, we hope takes the number one priority. And bottom line results are a factor as well. What if a positive patient experience achieved both goals? Given the impact of this area? I'm really excited to dig into Ben's wisdom around patient experience. Ben, welcome to CX passport.

Ben Seals: 2:07

Hey, thank you, Rick, I'm excited to be here. today.

Rick Denton: 2:09

We're gonna have a good ride where you're definitely gonna have a good ride. Let's go right all the way back to your origins. I'm sure that when career beginning Ben took his first phone call about a dial up modem, he didn't see the path to CEO of Thomas Eye Group. Yet, that's exactly where that path took you. How do you think that starred in customer service influences you and your role today?

Ben Seals: 2:29

Yeah. So I still remember that first phone call, the fear and the trepidation coming training, I remember I can picture that training room today, sitting in a class of 30 people going through technical support, training, and then being thrown into a live environment. And taking that first phone call not knowing who or what was on the right. And whether or not I had the skills or the resources to solve it. In that environment. I learned to love talking to customers, it's still something that I really enjoy doing today, you learn to take imperfect information, and try to find a solution for your customers. And to this day, I still enjoy talking directly to our customers, it's one of the most rewarding things that I get the opportunity to do. Because I get to hear directly from them how we can make their experience better.

Rick Denton: 3:27

The reality of the leader of the company, getting that direct experience with the customer, you you will hear customer experience people like me or consultants talking about, you know, doing that it's encouraging here right off the bat that you've said that I want to explore that and go a little deeper into that later in the episode. And understand how does that manifest and what value are you getting out of it? Because we can talk about it in our webinars and our customer experience theories. But you're right there, on the front lines actually doing that. And I want to hear about that. I want to talk first though, about that shift that I mentioned in the introduction. And it used to be we many of us can remember that world where you chose your medical provider simply based off of what your primary care told you to do. They said go see Dr. X, and you went to go see Dr. X. And I know that a lot of times I thought, heck that's just flat out required. But now choice is entering the picture. I've experienced it as a patient that I evaluate providers based off of x, y and z. What are your thoughts around that patient choice awakening, and how it's going to impact the overall medical industry?

Ben Seals: 4:35

I think it forces practices to be better. That when you recognize that your consumers might be sitting in your waiting room searching for your competitor because they're dissatisfied with your service. Or you think about the fact that if your check in process or your agent isn't delivering top quality care, and the next competitor is only the top of a phone away And most of our customers have that access in their pocket. It forces you to rethink how you engage with your customer population, and forces you to think about things like branding, accessibility, user experience, and evaluate your overall journey. To help you become a differentiated provider.

Your CX Passport Captain: 5:18

This is your captain speaking. I want to thank you for listening to CX Passport today. We’ve now reached our cruising altitude so I’ll turn that seatbelt sign off. <ding> While you’re getting comfortable, hit that Follow or Subscribe button in your favorite podcast app so you never miss an episode. I’d love it if you’d tell a friend about CX Passport and leave a review so that others can discover the show as well. Now, sit back and enjoy the rest of the episode.

Rick Denton: 5:44

And that thought of the customer sitting in the chair in the waiting room. That's an interesting visual for me that they're dissatisfied and they're actively looking around. What are some of the things that you've recognized? are areas that could cause that customer pull out that phone and start to look differently? And how are you ensuring that the the brand or the patient experience that they're going through is one that would keep them? Yeah, put that phone back in your pocket?

Ben Seals: 6:11

Yeah, it's one of the unique challenges that we wrestle with in the eye care industry, there's a misalignment and expectations of how long a complex medical eye exam should take. Okay? And so we're paying when patients don't understand or have an appropriate expectation of how long this exam should take. Then when they're, they receive a service that doesn't meet their expectations, they start to ask questions, and one of those questions that patients are very quick to ask is, do I need to come back here? Or am I going to receive the right care from somebody who, you know I look at it is we don't respect their time. And they immediately jump to that conclusion of automatically if they are waiting for to see a doctor. We're not respecting their time. It's, it's a function of waste in the healthcare system. It's a function of not appreciating the demands on our own patients. And again, having a respect for their time, when they they're sitting there waiting, sometimes that's necessary. There's extremely complex testing that goes into our business, there's actually reasons why you have to sit and wait for your eyes to dilate. Or there may be some other scenario that's happening that causes your experience or your encounter in our organization to take longer. And as a result of that, if we don't align those expectations, I think patients will be quick to look for an alternative source of care.

Rick Denton: 7:48

What I like about that, Ben is that's the specifics definitely sound unique to the eye care industry, the length of the the exam, the dilation, right, we're not getting our eyes dilated when we go to a restaurant or when we experienced the airlines or anything like that. But it's that misalignment around expectations, there's a fellow CX are out there, and he was actually a guest on the podcast about a year and a half ago. And it was it was it talks about aligning to your brand promise is what the customer, the patient, the guest, that's going to be the most important and having those expectations there in place. We talked about IKEA, I want to think about just kind of the medical experience in general, why are patients now able to have choice that they didn't have before? If I think about a hotel, well, I can choose from brand. I won't use names brand A or brand to be sure. But if I think about the medical world, it's changed. Why is it different now.

Ben Seals: 8:46

I think that's a function of just the volume of information that's now available. Those brands that you mentioned, for the hotels, you see the billboards, you drive by their buildings, but you don't necessarily take note of the different medical brands that exist within a given market. And so you have a need for an ophthalmologist or an ear, nose and throat doctor or a cardiologist, but you can go search for a cardiologist much easier or an ophthalmologist much easier than you used to be able to do. And now that that information is more accessible, it really is driving better. It's driving more discipline and driving a better orientation towards patient care throughout the medical community.

Rick Denton: 9:35

You know, I think about visibility, a price is starting to increase and that was one of the triggers that made me think about patient experiences, they can realize that uh, let's use it. It's totally out of an MRI at one provider is $6,000 versus $120 at another provider, surprise, visibility, but even that brand transparency that you're describing. I can think about it as I drive down the highways here in my DFW area I see medical and especially dental clinics really focused on that advertising and that branding of, if you come to our clinics, you will get this type of experience. So if that is so important to deliver that patient experience, it is one of those that sort of drives the financial aspect of it. Right? It we, you can even hear me kind of having trouble with this question. Because it is so insensitive to talk about, we don't talk about price. We don't talk about the business of medicine. It's easy to talk about the benefits of great experience in hospitality or in other industries. But how does that help with the medical industry, I want to first talk about just kind of the business aspect of medicine. But then I want to talk about patient outcomes.

Ben Seals: 10:49

Yep. I think there's there's a need for medicine to make sure that they're also considering their bottom line. It's a challenging environment and health care. The reimbursements that that providers receive are going down, the volume of care needed to deliver is going up. And so these, the graphs are converging ultimately in a in a significant way. But ultimately, there is a economic reality to delivering better care, especially in the eye care, world that we live in. One example that I can give you is the glasses and contacts component of our business, we've tracked and realize that, if we can see patients in 60 minutes or less, there's a 37% higher chance that they will purchase glasses and contacts from our organization than walk away. If again, financial benefit, and reward for delivering good patient care, and a good experience. So we have to earn the privilege to sell them those glasses and contacts by delivering great service throughout their experience. And so there absolutely is a financial component to patient experience within a healthcare practice.

Rick Denton: 12:09

Oh my gosh, Ben, you have no idea how many customer experience professionals listening to this just kind of left from their chairs and got excited because one of the biggest challenges is helping a company directly tie experience to the financial results. And you have described it beautifully of if we do this type of experience, they will buy this product and therefore experience directly ties to it. That is absolutely brilliant. And I for those of you out there in the CX world, enjoy that little nugget there. Let's talk about the other side of it, though, because again, the business is easy for us to talk about a little awkward, but business is business, right. But fundamentally, this is about medical outcomes. This is about not just a great I keep going back hospital, not just a great stay. But this is about achieving a medical outcome. How have you seen patient experience improve medical outcomes?

Ben Seals: 13:04

You know, that's a great question. I think the trust that a patient will impute onto their provider. And the communication that that facilitates, helps that provider better diagnose the future needs of that patient to deliver the right surgical recommendations to deliver the right treatment plans. In our business. If you you know if I can dive really deep for a moment, if you think about, you know, a my grandma, who she does a lot of needlepoint. Well, that requires meticulous visual detail. If her doctor knows that she wants to be able to see finer details up close, versus just watching TV, which is distance vision, he can prescribe a better set of glasses, or he can recommend a different surgical product that might actually help her in doing what it is she enjoys to do as a hobby. And so that ability of our doctors to facilitate and communicate with their customers that are in their their chair, to extract that information, understand and assess their needs, helps us deliver more satisfied patient outcomes down the road. And so you have to I believe you have to earn that trust our practices is built on being a lifetime practice. So we want to see patients from the time they're born until they age and to the latter stages of care that we provide. And so every time they're in our office, we have to earn the right through the routine care that we provide to address the surgical or acute needs that they may have in the future. And so we talked about internally, lifetime value, customer, you know, customer experience retention rates, what that retention rate drives satisfaction and what levers we have to poll to influence long term retention of customers that had been with the practice for 40 plus years. And then you talk about the monetary value of a 40 year customer and what products we deliver, that can help them see better, ultimately, our goal, but the finance of the organization is exponentially better when we focus on delivering consistent outcomes for retained patients.

Rick Denton: 15:31

If you when you talked about the lifetime value, that's actually what I was saying when you talked about from birth to, to the senior stages of life, and you've mentioned 40 years, but I imagine you will eventually have patients that will have been with you for 5060 7080, God willing, 90 years, right. And so there's some true lifetime value calculations going into there that you can create a great experience. There was one thing that you said earlier. And it reminded me of what is probably one of the biggest pain points for me inside of a medical scenario. And it's not, it's the weight. Let me just start by saying that, but it's not the weight of a procedure to be done. But it's the waiting before it's the waiting after. Let's dive a little bit into there that this is how we can improve both the business results and the medical care. How are you identifying where those waste points were waste points inside the patient experience are and address those.

Ben Seals: 16:28

So we look at Lean Six Sigma methodology for cus as a customer, when they're sitting waiting, or when they're having to move from room to room or piece of equipment to a room. That's waste. That is time that the customer is having to expense that doesn't bring them any value. And so we have some really talented members of our team that help us look at the process and the flow of patients through our practice to try and find what find ways to eliminate that waste and really drive an overall better patient experience.

Rick Denton: 17:09

Ben, that is absolutely fantastic. Now one area that I do like to wait Well, I never like to wait when I'm traveling. But if I have to wait. And I actually did have a five hour wait in Haneda airport a week or so ago. But it was nice to be in the lounge. And so Ben, we won't do a ton of waiting here. But I want you to join me here in the first class lounge. We will move quickly. We hope here and hopefully have some fun. What is a dream travel location from your past?

Ben Seals: 17:35

Kiruhura Uganda

Rick Denton: 17:39

Oh my gosh.

Ben Seals: 17:40

Yeah. The best sunrise you will ever see.

Rick Denton: 17:45

Now I didn't hear I want you to say it again to make sure we hear it. What was the I heard Uganda but with the city?

Ben Seals: 17:52

Kiruhura Uganda.

Rick Denton: 17:55

All right. The why what makes it the best sunrise?

Ben Seals: 17:58

I don't know. There's a there's a incredible view. It's in the rainy region of Uganda. And just the view from there. If you look at my LinkedIn profile, the sunset that's in my background is a snapshot that I got the chance to take when my daughter and I went back in 2019. And we both of us can't wait to go back.

Rick Denton: 18:20

Oh, that's awesome. Now, listeners, I promise. This is not a setup. It is not a stage. But as Ben and I record this, the plans are that his episode will come out two weeks before my first ever guest from Uganda. So it's kind of blowing my mind that you happen to mention that we did not talk about that ahead of time. But here we are. So listeners not only to get a good sense that you're going to hear from someone from Uganda in a couple of weeks, then what's a dream travel location you've not been to yet.

Ben Seals: 18:44

Greece. I really want to go to Greece. And in fact, my wife and I celebrate our 50th anniversary this year, and it's on the docket we're going have you already booked it? Yes.

Rick Denton: 18:57

This has been a little bit surreal. My wife and I are in active plans for our anniversary celebration. We're a little bit past 15. But our anniversary celebration in Greece this year as well. So it's getting a little weird here. I promise. We did not set this up ahead of time, but I hope you'll have a wonderful trip. And who knows, maybe that'll be a way to bump into each other. We'll see. One of the things that I love about Greece. Well, I hope to love about Greece, but I'm sure I will is the food. I love Greek food and so Ben, what's a favorite thing to eat?

Ben Seals: 19:28

I have a insatiable sweet tooth. And so banana pudding is my kryptonite. I cannot walk past it without having a bowl or fue

Rick Denton: 19:41

I love that. I almost want to make that the quote for the episode I would imagine I'll do something more business related but I love banana pudding as my kryptonite that is. That is absolutely brilliant. So what is the thing your parents forced you to eat but you hated as a kid?

Ben Seals: 19:53

Oh, tuna casserole. Sorry, mom. But But tuna casserole,

Rick Denton: 20:02

I guess we just lost one listener if mom is listening right now, oh, my goodness. Well, you got to see. And listeners, you've probably heard my visceral reaction to that I share a dislike of that with you as well, then what is one travel item, not including your phone that you will not leave home without,

Ben Seals: 20:20

if I could leave my phone, but still bring my Audible account, I would do it every time.

Rick Denton: 20:30

You know, Ben, something that you said earlier, and I promised that we were going to get into it later. But when I think back to my dad's solo, ear, nose and throat practice, he was pretty dialed into his patient experience, because that was just the way medicine was then there were only three people in the office him a nurse and a receptionist. And so I know that's become more difficult as the quote, sort of business of medicine continues to grow. It sounds like you already know how you overcome it. And that's one way of getting out there. But overall, how are you overcoming that distance between the business of medicine in your mind? And the patient? How do you get out of that boardroom and into really understanding what it takes to create a great patient experience?

Ben Seals: 21:11

So I think there's three things that come to mind when I think about and I love the question getting out of the boardroom or getting out of my office. First is listening to phone calls, I love to sit down with our Director of Patient Experience, who oversees all of our contact centers, and sit in a conference room with her and listen to phone calls. And hear where we're winning. But also where we have opportunities and celebrating our team in those moments. Finally, I like to put myself in the patient's shoes. Frankly, I do that by secret shopping, the competitors that I think are doing it better than me, okay, and I love getting an eye exam somewhere else than Thomas I group. I don't get a true experience of an eye exam when I walk into one of my offices. But when I when I go to a competitors, and they have no idea who I am right to see how they interact with their patients, maybe better than we do, how they greet me how they pre register, how they initiate communication, what touch points, they keep up with that maybe our organization hadn't thought of our that competition inspires innovation within our organization. And so pretty regularly, I challenge our entire leadership team to go get eye exams somewhere else in the community,

Rick Denton: 22:33

that must mean that you almost have the the best and most well cared for eyes. I imagine all of you secret shopping out there and all of these different providers, and I gotta imagine, right your your face and name is going to be pretty well known across your, your organization. And so getting out there in the company, the competitors is a brilliant idea as well. And listeners will know how much I love call listening. I talked about it all the time, and how valuable that is. And then you talked about the celebrating aspect of it, Ben, it's almost like you're doing a promotion for my total voice, the customer methodology, because it's it's that listen, it's that act, and then the engaged part of it. That is absolutely so brilliant to hear and how you get that out of the boardroom into the actual practice. Let's talk about some of those stories that you heard. So you're on, you're on a call listening, you hear something, I know that I've been brought to tears in a corporate meeting something as sterile as a home equity business, hearing a story being told about the way the home equity impacted a particular customer. And it just has an incredible impact. And so in the world of medicine, I've got to imagine stories of Health have an even greater level of emotional impact. How do you bring storytelling into Thomas Eye Group.

Ben Seals: 23:50

So one of the most consistent ways that we deliver the message or the picture of the care that we're privileged to provide to our community, we talked about the care that we provide as a privilege that the communities that we're in are trusting us to deliver high quality care and I talk about that with every new hire class, I talk about how and celebrate how our people are winning and doing that. We have a an award that we give away every quarter called the award of excellence. And that feeds my stories of where our people are winning for our customers and delivering compassionate care. And so there there's so many stories I could tell but one that they just as you were talking about the home equity environment. We had a young woman call into our office and her husband was having tremendous eye pain. And she wasn't a customer at Thomas I groups, but her actual her normal eye care provider wasn't available to see her that day. And the representative on our phone took this call of this lady who was just panicked for her husband, oh, gosh, trying to help her, get an appointment for him so that he could figure out what was going on, and what needed to be addressed. And this, we actually replayed this for our leadership team to remind them, this is what we do every day. Right? I, I talk a lot about numbers, I talk a lot about, you know, managing the business from a key performance indicator perspective. But at the end of the day, this, you know, this need that occurred in our community is what we're tasked with being stewards of each and every day. And so having those reminders is what keeps us grounded with, with what we're responsible for.

Rick Denton: 25:46

I have to imagine the emotion in that, I guess, not the patient's wife's voice coming through, there had to be fent. Stunning. How, in that story, I'm thinking about the agent as well. How does the agent handle that emotion? How does the agent handle pivoting that into action and solving and helping and addressing that in that moment? What, let me ask it differently, actually, why was that agent able to be successful in that scenario?

Ben Seals: 26:18

So I think it's, it's a combination of different things. One is, we have a triage component to our contact center. So when this kind of call comes in, it gets elevated to a higher skill, high level agent, who's given the authority and the autonomy, to go outside of the normal rubric of scheduling, and saw and be a one call resolution for a patient. And so that person was able to, you know, push aside all the bureaucracy of of 18 location practice with 47 doctors and say, Okay, what's the location closest to you? And the lady said, I don't care, I want the, I want the soonest appointment. Okay, I will drive, you know, driving in Atlanta, if you're going more than five miles, it takes about an hour. But she was on one end of the city, and ultimately was willing to go anywhere to be seen today. And giving that agent, the tools and the skills to address the need is the responsibility of our leadership team in the organization. So I think that's what enabled that agent in that moment. To win a customer hopefully for life.

Rick Denton: 27:31

Yeah, I know that hearing that story, I would be a customer for life. You have said, If I edited the episode down to just that question, and just that answer, the insight that you just shared here. It is amazing to me how many companies don't get what you just said, right? And I'm not just trying to blow sunshine up your fanny. It is amazing how there'll be the blame thrown to the agent or you know, Oh, you didn't do that right, or whatever you have identified. Look, we had the two I heard this and you didn't sometimes you said the words but I heard process. We have a triage process in place that automatically allows us to handle this. It's not ad hoc. We've got a process in place, then we've upskilled and trained our agents to do x y&z and then there is are the tools, available processes, training tools, all those things, that some companies may talk about getting right in their contact center, but that's how you were able to end Thomas iGroup in this agent, we're able to deliver a great experience there. It really is something that other companies use words to aspire to that is every every I'll tell you this my customer experience, people may have been cheering earlier. Any agent listening right now is like, yes, yes

Ben Seals: 28:43

the outcomes that our agents produce, are a function of the tools that we have made available to them. Right, they are not able to be successful. Most of the time, a high percentage of the time, it is not their fault. It's a lack of training, a lack of resource or lack of structure. And that's, that's where, you know, it's it's people process or systems. And most of the time, the people are a function of the process and systems in an organization. If you don't have the ladder to correct, the people aren't going to be as successful as they're capable of being.

Rick Denton: 29:20

I could just stop the episode right there. I'm not going to but that that would be a wonderful Ender, but I want to turn and look forward, then I want to look at 2023. And as you and I record this, we're sitting in January 2023. And so it's a pretty common question right? Looking ahead. What's the challenge on the horizon in 2023 for patient experience,

Ben Seals: 29:41

I think the lack of available talent is the biggest challenge our practice faces. So, we are in a human resource crisis. And ultimately, we will look to Technology and other innovations to help solve that. But it will be imperative for organizations to find and train and upskill their employees so that those employees can reach their full potential and can deliver high quality care. That's the biggest challenge right now is people are not. Most people that we hire are not immediately equipped to deliver the results that we need them to. And so we have to make those investments in them in order for us to achieve our best outcomes. And so I think talent, and the current available talent is the biggest challenge not only from a doctor perspective, the number of doctors graduating is shrinking, the number of patients needing care is increasing. But also from a staff perspective, the available trained, talented staff, we are going to have to learn to create those in the healthcare market and generate that future 30 year employee today that can help us deliver great outcomes,

Rick Denton: 31:04

then that's going to be a pretty significant challenge. And other industries are struggling with that as well. But what came to mind there is thinking, you and I could do an entire episode now about employee experience and how that helps overcome that challenge. But we're out of time we can't go into there. But I would imagine that employee experience plays a strong in your mind. And this has been fantastic I going into this I wasn't entirely sure exactly where we'd go and what the themes were. But one of the themes that I heard was this blend of business, like you talked about Lean Six Sigma earlier as a way to solve and identify ways to remove that so that you can prove patient experiences, which then ultimately improve medical outcomes. And I think that blend of business and medicine is something that maybe gets shied away from conversationally, but it's really insightful, not just to the medicine industry, but beyond the medicine industry. And the way you described, equipping agents is something that is universal across any contact center. And so I got a lot of insight and enjoyment out of that. And I do hope to someday find that sunrise in Uganda for myself. Inspired by you, Ben. I really appreciate you being on the show. Thank you for being on CX passport today. How if people wanted to learn more about you or Thomas Eye Group, how can they learn more about that?

Ben Seals: 32:16

LinkedIn is the best way to get in touch with me feel free to reach out I would love to connect there abouts Thomas Eye Group, we're available on LinkedIn as well or you can check out our website. Rick, it's been an absolute pleasure. And who knows, maybe I'll see you in Greece.

Rick Denton: 32:34

Thanks for joining us this week on CX Passport. Make sure to visit our website cxpassport.com where you can hit subscribe so you'll never miss a show. While you're at it, you can check out the rest of the EX4CX website. If you're looking to get real about customer experience, EX4CX is available to help you increase revenue by starting to listen to your customers and create great experiences for every customer every time. Thanks for listening to CX Passport and be sure to tune in for our next episode. Until next time, I'm Rick Denton, and I believe the best meals are served outside and require a passport.