To get your organization on track, follow these guidelines:

Make a plan with accountability and focus.

Ask yourself five key questions about your current customers (click here). Decide exactly who you want to be and who you want your customers to be. When you have a plan, put it on paper, share it with everyone in the company and hold every employee accountable for customer satisfaction.

It takes lots of time and effort to get new customers — but you need to spend even more time and effort in keeping them. Consider what one organization does to keep customers coming back:

Patients measure you against all of their other service experiences — including those of companies such as Federal Express, L.L. Bean, Disney and Nordstrom. Value and quality are both perceived and defined by the customer. So you need to define excellent service in terms that are relevant to the customer. Then you need to exceed their expectations. Take a look at how successful companies are setting standards to exceed any customer’s needs.

Understand how your customers buy.

Today, our customers are far more sophisticated about healthcare than ever before. They read more and understand more about the subject, which also affects the way they buy our services. Interestingly enough, price is really irrelevant to people’s healthcare "purchases." Customers are buying the experience, the education, the service and the value they perceive they’re getting through a relationship with a healthcare provider. And whoever pays attention to those reasons will end up getting and, more importantly, keeping the customer’s business.

Market your services to meet your customers’ needs.

Marketing today is more than ever about responding to your customer’s individual needs. By tracking their activity in your facility — when they’ve visited and why they came — you’ll be well equipped to promote your services to them in the future. Whether you choose to reach them on a small scale (a personal phone call) or on a bigger level (direct marketing), you’ll be prepared to reach someone who is a prime candidate for what you have to offer.

Become externally focused.

Walt Disney was a visionary and a phenomenal listener. He developed ideas that fit a need, want or desire that he heard a customer tell him about. In a nutshell, that’s the key to keeping your customers satisfied. By taking the pulse of your marketplace and finding the right way to respond, you’ll easily outperform the rest of the competition.

Teach your organization how to serve the customer.

Everyone in your organization is ultimately responsible for the customer’s service experience — so your company needs to operate like a team. And to foster a team spirit, you need to show your employees how to put the customer first — in a way that’s meaningful to them. Build ways to continually recognize and reward proactive customer service behaviors in ways that create ownership for employees. Share your customer relationship strategy with them. They’ll feel like part of the team, they’ll take pride in their work and it will open up lines of communication both internally and externally.

Differentiate who you are, what your business is, and how you do business.

Before you’re ready to say "Hey, look at us!" you’ve got to identify what makes you great. And you can’t tell the public that you do everything well. Too many healthcare providers are giving the same broad message and ending up all looking the same to the public. The key is to capture the difference that positions a benefit to consumers and make it personal for them.

Now you’re on your way to building a lasting relationship with your customers. But remember, it will be a constantly changing relationship and one you’ll have to monitor continually. Keep listening to your customers. Stay in touch with what your peers are doing — inside and outside the industry. Ask your customers for feedback. Take it to heart. Act on it. Sure, anyone can "talk the talk" about customer retention. But when you truly value a customer relationship, your customers will pick up on your ability to fulfill the promise and your enthusiasm. Best of all, they’ll tell other people, too.

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Her many professional affiliations include American Association of Healthcare Consultants, American Hospital Association-Society for Planning & Marketing, Alliance for Healthcare Marketing and Planning, American Marketing Association and National Association of Occupational Health Professionals (Ryan).