What is the difference between Patient Satisfaction and Patient Loyalty?
Are they the same are they different? They are, in fact, different.
Patient satisfaction is fool’s gold.
Patient loyalty is really where you want to be.
Now mathematically, there’s actually a difference. The science says there’s a difference. And how do we know that difference? By questioning your patients.
Survey your patients on what’s called the Net Promoter Score.
What is a Net Promoter Score?
It is asking your patients one simple question: “How likely are you to refer a friend or family member to my practice?”
The people that give you nine and tens are promoters.
The people give you six through zeros are detractors.
The seven or eights, those are the satisfied people but not necessarily the loyal ones.
Your Net Promoter Score is the percentage of people that give you nine and tens minus the percentage of people that give you zero through six.
A Net Promoter Score or 50 or above is considered excellent.
Why does this matter?
A satisfied patient could come to your practice and be satisfied but then leave for the competition down the street or leave for some other alternative in health care.
A loyal patient is the one that’s literally singing your praises, they’re a raving fan, they’re more likely to return, and they’re also more likely to drive more people into your practice for greater impact.
So understanding the difference between satisfaction or loyalty is really really key.
Now you know how to measure it. How do you measure it with your patient base?
I’m going to give you one simple easy trick:
Go to Survey Monkey, make sure you enter that question “how likely are you to refer a friend or family member to my practice?” Do a Likert scale from 0 to 10, and then blast it out to all of your patients in an email blast. That’s going to give you your benchmark score.
Our next post will teach you how to increase patient loyalty and improve your Net Promoter Score.
But first, understanding Net Promoter Score in loyalty and making sure that you send out that initial email through Survey Monkey and getting your Net Promoter Score is the first step.
So we will see you next time – make sure you do those steps!