An off-license story
Mr Sharma wanted to start an off-licence shop in his town. He leased a property, got a license from his town council and started selling different goods. Sharma was selling a bit of everything from grocery to alcohol to meet the needs of different customers. He employed an assistant to help him with arranging the shelves and sometimes even the ’till’.
People from different background visited Sharma’s shop. Sharma knew that ‘customer is the king’ and should try to please everyone so that they will come again. He looked after his staff very well, taught his only employee how to treat customers on a daily basis. Sharma showed him how to go the extra mile for the customers so that they will prefer his shop than Londis or Iceland.
Sharma’s business started to grow with right customer experience, word of mouth, quality items on the shelf and correct pricing. He had proper systems and processes in place to run the shop like a well-oiled machine even when he is not around. He always monitored how many repeat business he is getting. If someone is not happy about the product or experience, he still put measures in place to make them happy again. Sharma’s off-license shop is one of the best in town now. As you can imagine it is not a surprise as he focused on his customer satisfaction. On the other hand if he
Assumption – If CQC doesn’t exist?
Imagine there is no such thing as CQC. There is no regulatory system in place to monitor your care home. How will you operate your care home? What kind of framework do you use to run your care home? Is it going to be any different than Sharma’s shop?
Questions to ask yourself
Consider asking yourself the following questions:
Why is it that I wanted to run a care home?
What systems and processes should I put in place to run it effectively?
How will I measure the customer experience?
How should I train my staff so that they can deliver the best customer experience?
What is my unique selling point?
What can I do better than other care homes?
Who are my stakeholders? How do I develop a good relationship with them?
How will I develop a good brand within the local community?
What makes my customers happy?
How do I look after my employees?
Boxed thinking
It is unfortunate that we are all conditioned to do ‘boxed’ thinking in the sector. We wanted to own a care home because it creates some money for the pension pot, not because we wanted to provide a better service.
Systems and process are in place since the care home started, but never reviewed until it hit the crisis point.
We measure customer experience once a year with a survey. Is that enough? Shouldn’t it be an ongoing thing?
We train our staff only with ‘mandatory’ training, from Health and safety to Dementia awareness. We are tempted to choose cheap training without recognising what impact it has made on improving the quality of care. We forget the staff’s learning style and their aspirations are different.
We do not want to be a different type of care home. People should choose us because the environment is friendly and all the rooms have windows. Is there nothing more why we are different?
Community involvement – oh dear. All those people are coming in to spy us. They are going to report us to authorities. What are we doing to foster a positive relationship with the community hence double the referrals?
We look after our staff with minimum wage and traditional training and a Christmas dinner. Hence we have a massive turnover which cost us more money than we realise. We don’t listen to them enough. Sometimes we do listen, but don’t do anything about it. We forget that our staff need to be looked after well for our care business to thrive. Why should we keep them unhappy?
Ultimately, what about our customer? We call them residents, service users, people, patients or with a different title. The term we call them is of little relevance, but how we treat them is of high significance. They pay us money to shout for help, wait to be attended, cold porridge, to do skittles and play balloon games. What are we doing differently to keep our residents happy? Our customer satisfaction rate is 80%, but the survey doesn’t have the column to ask why? How on earth can we sleep when we have only 80% satisfaction rate?
Let creativity flourish
We are all conditioned to operate care homes in a way as the regulation says so. It is not a criticism to all of us, but at least to some of us. The question is how many care homes will continue to survive if CQC doesn’t exist. How many care homes will run a successful business like Sharma’s shop considering the customer as the king?
Regulations are there to be compliant with the law, but that shouldn’t be limiting us from being different or delivering outstanding care. Just a good rating means you are just meeting the compliance. (This is not always the case). I would argue if CQC doesn’t exist the only care homes who will survive for too long will be those with an outstanding rating because they are innovative, creative and break traditional thinking. Why can’t you be one of them? Will you be still in the business if CQC doesn’t exist? Grab a coffee at the corner of your residents’ lounge, do some observation and ask yourself these questions.
Consultancy
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