ABSTRACT
This chapter highlights the issues that need to be taken into account in developing a customer care programme within the hospital or unit. Couple this with the public's generally greater willingness to complain and take their custom elsewhere, and the arguments for a customer care policy become ever more apparent. The private hospitals have a variety of different customer groups, each with their individual and varying sets of expectations. It is for this reason that the private hospitals tend to give individual managers the responsibility for dealing with a particular customer group. A key part of any customer care programme is measurement. Continuous staff training on customer care is routinely undertaken and involves all staff in small, multilevel, multidiscipline groups. The style of training tends to be based on reflective learning, staff developing their own portfolio and using self-assessment for measurement of the effectiveness of the training.
