Ever notice how the computer can shave about fifteen years off your looks? This is especially true when you post old photos of yourself. High School friends, which you know you will never see again, find you on Facebook and comment as to how good you look. That’ll show ‘em.

So, how’s your day going? Mine’s fine—thanks for asking. I’ve been meaning to write about a few customer care experiences I liked, and then see who we can apply the idea to healthcare and Patient Relationship Management (PRM), so here goes.

It recently occurred to me that very few of today’s children know how freshly baked bread smells, so I decided I would learn how to bake. For those who know me, I’m neither big on details nor on taking direction—not a big detail when it comes to mowing the lawn, but rather significant in baking since it’s almost all chemistry. I like sourdough, so I thought I’d start with that.  It turns out you can’t.  You can start to start, but you can’t actually bake any until you’ve created a ‘starter’.  The starter is somewhat akin to creating life where there was none.  From a concoction of flour, water, sugar, and salt (basically the recipe for Play-dough) wild yeasts will infest the mix and begin to grow.

With my science project growing in a Ball jar on my counter, and after several rather impressive attempts at white bread, I decided to whip up a rather large batch of pizza dough.  Since I was in a hurry I ignored the admonition to slowly add the remaining three cups of flour, and dumped it into the mixing bowl.  Thwump!  As the bright red mixer ground loudly to a halt I learned why they’d included that little warning. A faint smell of burnt ozone wafted through the kitchen as the cloud of flour settled slowly on the granite counter top.

The KitchenAid mixer was dead. The last thing I fixed was the bell on my tricycle when I was four, so I don’t know what made me thing I could fix this. I went to Kitchenaid’s web site, typed in the model number, and hit enter. Nothing. I searched their site. Nothing. Went to Google. Typed in, “repair Kitchenaid mixer.” Within two minutes I found a web site that matched exactly my problem. I clicked the link. There was a step-by-step set of instructions and photos instructing how to disassemble the mixer right down to the broken part, the worm gear. The author also provided a link to a parts supplier, the price of the part, and an estimate for how long it takes for it to arrive.

Painless. Within a week my mixer was working although I did have one screw left over. I didn’t have to box it, ship it, pay for it; nothing. Some kind soul had taken it upon himself to make my day by posting his success on the internet. Could KitchenAid have done the same thing? Yes, for almost no cost. Another example of a firm who hasn’t learned to color outside the lines. Thank goodness one of the customers had.

Chances are good that your patients have posted more information about how to help their fellow patients than your hospital has posted.  It’s worth a look.  Chances are that they’ve also posted information that is wrong, things you would like to correct, but if you don’t know about it, you can’t correct it.  Want to know a good place to start a social media strategy?  Learn from your patients.