The Effects of a Customer Service Initiative at Moncrief Army Community Hospital

In November 2006, Moncrief Army Community Hospital (MACH) instituted a customer service initiative intended to improve overall patient satisfaction by changing the behavior of front-desk clerks. The initiative involved front-desk clerks offering every outpatient customer an Interactive Customer Evaluation (ICE) comment card upon completion of their ambulatory visit. Implementation priority was given to the Urgent Care Clinic (UCC) and the Family Health Clinic (FHC). The purpose of this case study is to examine the actual consequences of implementing the ICE card initiative to determine the potential usefulness of this customer service initiative in other AMEDD facilities. The ICE card results indicate that ICE card overall satisfaction and staff attitude scores increased in each of the clinics when evaluated from one year to the next; however, these results have limited power and reliability based on the few number of responses prior to the initiative. The APLSS results indicate that while staff courtesy and helpfulness is a significant predictor of overall satisfaction and the ICE card initiative did improve staff courtesy and helpfulness, the initiative did not improve staff courtesy and helpfulness enough to make a significant contribution to overall satisfaction. Based on these results, the author recommends utilizing the ICE card initiative to improve ICE card results; however, further research with a larger sample size is necessary to determine whether the ICE card initiative actually improves staff courtesy and helpfulness significantly enough to recommend implementation at other clinics or facilities. The original document contains color images. All DTIC reproductions will be in black and white.