Best Practice for Effective Referral Issue Management in 2015

By: Betsy Finekelmeier, RN, MBA

Physician sales representatives spend significant time managing issues that threaten retention of their loyal customers.  All too often, members of the sales team are told repeatedly about recurring issues that impede the ease of referral.  Most sales representatives possess a wealth of anecdotal information about the chronic organizational issues that threaten referral loyalty.  Successful representatives are skilled at listening to their customers and performing needed service recovery.  However, best practice for issue management in 2015 goes beyond this individualized approach; an effective issue management program calls for electronic tracking and the disciplined application of a standardized process to monitor issue resolution and to measure performance.

Issue management is facilitated when sales representatives can document reported issues electronically in a shared database while they are in the field.  CRM software provides categorization, monitoring and measurement of referral issues as they are reported by physician customers.  What specifically should your organization be tracking?  First, using a standardized template and concise descriptors, all issues that impact referrals should be clearly defined and documented.  Each identified issue should be assigned to an organizationally relevant category, such as access, continuity of care or communication.  Such grouping of like issues allows them to be aggregated and evaluated collectively so that patterns and trends become apparent to operational leaders.

Electronic issue tracking must be combined with standard processes, performance expectations and organizational reporting to allow measurement of issue occurrence, as well as success in resolving individual issues and in eliminating recurring issues that act as ongoing barriers to referral.  The CRM should contain information that clearly defines the responsible owners by department or function.  A concise summary of every referral issue should be routed electronically to the responsible manager, who in turn, documents progress toward complete issue resolution.  Performance standards should be established to guide acceptable turnaround times for CRM documentation, response from the operational manager, determination of resolution status and feedback to the referring physician.  Issues should be reviewed regularly to monitor those that remain without response or resolution beyond specified turnaround times.  Unresolved issues should be escalated appropriately within the organizational hierarchy.  Standard reports of issues by category and department provide the critical data for an organizational dashboard that measures referral issue patterns and trends as well as issue management effectiveness.

Relationship sales skills and the service recovery routinely performed by the sales team are also critically important to referral retention.  However, they are only one component of an effective referral issue management program.  When enhanced by electronic tracking, a disciplined approach and standard processes for monitoring and measurement, the sales team can effectively demonstrate success in removing barriers to retention of referrals from loyal physician customers.