Why customer care promotion in hospital set-ups is vital

Promotion of customer care service in the hospital is vital to service delivery and has a positive impact on loyalty that can be perceived on the number of people re-visiting the hospital for health care services. It is worth to mention that high service quality correlates with high customer satisfaction in the general service context. This is because patient satisfaction is affected by the characteristics of the service providers and medical services. Patient satisfaction serves as a medium between service quality and behavioral intention. Favourable hospital quality services not only stimulate patient loyalty directly, but also enhance patient satisfaction through the improvement of perceived service quality, which in turn promotes the revisit intention of patients. In the competitive health care environment therefore, hospitals should focus their marketing efforts on effective customer care management. Specifically hospital directors should pay more attention to constructing the positive hospital customer care promotion strategies, by providing quality services to their clients. Hospital administrators should fully understand that the formation of a positive hospital customer care image is valuable to increasing perceived service quality and patient satisfaction, and hence, it encourages patient loyalty. However, in order to promote customer services, concerted efforts need to be put in place. Integrated marketing strategies such as advertising, public relations, communication with patients, service training, and internet marketing should be implemented to create and maintain the brand image. For instance, the use of advertising to create the perception of a strong medical institution with specialized medical services and modern facilities is helpful for the establishment of brand image toward a hospital. The end result of all this is the creation and maintenance of a positive hospital brand image that could allow a hospital to gain a competitive advantage in the competitive health care industry. It is worth to understand that service quality and patient satisfaction play major mediating roles between hospital customer care services and re-visit intention of the customers. Service quality indirectly affects re-visit intention through patient satisfaction. In this case, service quality is a very efficient vehicle to improve patient satisfaction, which in turn enhances patient loyalty. Hospital administrators should plan and implement patient oriented service strategies for medical services and hope that these strategies, will lead to higher patient satisfaction and loyalty. The patient oriented service strategies are important for providing high level medical services and must be carried out in multi dimensional aspects. The multi dimensional aspects include assurance, empathy, responsiveness, reliability, and tangibles. Regarding assurance, it is important to assure patients that they will obtain their desired level and quality of services at the time they are admitted to the hospital. All medical staffs have to demonstrate excellent professionalism, technical skills, efficacy, and courtesy in order to gain the patients’ confidence in the hospital. On the issue of empathy, the medical staffs should put emphasis on the performance of soft skills, such as providing individualized attention, understanding patients’ needs, giving caring concerns and so on. On the aspect of responsiveness, being swift and responsive to patients’ requests, and communicating with them openly are essential components of medical service delivery. Relating to reliability, the medical staffs ought to put efforts into the correct and dependable performance of medical services, such as registration, therapy, aftercare, and follow-up for patients. With respect to tangibles, hospitals must strive to provide and maintain the cleanliness of the environment, the neatness of buildings, the decoration of wards, and the appearance of medical staffs. Ends