Customer Service Is Not A Four Letter Word

I’m English, I live in London. Regular readers might already know that. Here in the UK we enjoy (and collude in) appalling customer service. Take my experience of signing up to a new GP surgery. It’s across from my house. Literally. I popped over there to collect a form. A form. Small piece of paper with a monetary value of about 0.0000001. No big deal right.

Wrong. I didn’t have my NHS number with me. I said to the woman at the reception desk “I’ll just run home with this form, fill it in at home where I have my NHS number and bring it straight back”. She told me in no uncertain terms that I was not to take that form off site. At this point, I was merely curious so I asked why and could not get a rational answer out of her. She just dug her heals in and repeated that I wasn’t allowed to take an uncompleted form with no information on it (confidential or otherwise) off site.

I’m ashamed to say I lost my temper with her. I don’t shout when I lose my temper but I did use a “tone” with her. Frankly, it wouldn’t have been much of a big deal to leave the form, get my NHS card and come back but by then I was so angry at her attitude that I dug my heals in as much as she was digging in hers.

What’s this got to do with therapy. A lot of the time I pick up clients because I got back to them quickly. I got back to them within the time limit I set for myself – 24hrs. I got a smart phone precisely so I could get back them sooner than that in most cases. I regularly hear from clients that other therapists didn’t get back to them for days or didn’t get back to them at all.

Not good enough. What’s worse is that I hear therapists hiding behind their theoretical method as an excuse to not respond to clients. This just blows my mind. How arrogant. You are not your modality. Your clients are not your modality. Your clients likely don’t know, or care about your modality. Your clients are in pain, they are suffering. That’s why they picked up the phone to you.

Call them back. In a timely fashion. Don’t be a douche about it. Even if all your clinical hours are full there is no excuse to not return the message to thank the client for getting in touch and explaining that you’re not clients at the moment.

You may think that it’s not your job or not “the way I work” to return calls, but, and I am going to be unapologetically straightforward about this, it is. You are running a business. Ask yourself who do you want to be in your business…because when you don’t return a call or when you return it days later, THAT is what the potential client will remember about you. THAT is what they will tell their friends. That will be part of what keeps you struggling for clients.

Customer service is important. It is relevant to your job as a therapist. It’s got very little to do with your modality. Make a pack with yourself to serve your clients – both current and potential – the same way you’d like to served.