Exceptional Customer Service for Lab Outreach Starts with Medical Couriers 

Whether employed internally or outsourced, medical couriers are by far the most visible contact an outreach lab will have with its customers. With routine visits and regular pleasantries with physician office staff, your couriers are usually the first to know if there is a problem brewing or if a customer needs special attention. With so much facetime with your clients, couriers can be one of your biggest assets for providing exceptional customer service.

Acting as eyes and ears for the laboratory, medical couriers can provide valuable feedback on the operations of your service clients, how your services are being received, and whether they are utilizing competing services. Furthermore, as your couriers ultimately represent you to your clients, it is important to reasonably assure yourself that your couriers are professional and courteous and are versed in the needs of your clients.[1]

Laboratory managers with experience in outreach logistics are aware of the need for reliable courier services to collect and deliver specimens, samples, and supplies, and that the overall effectiveness of the service is more than the sum of those parts. These couriers are the outward “face” of the laboratory and most likely see and interact with the laboratory’s outreach clients far more often than an institution’s outreach sales representatives. Thus, gaining and maintaining open communication with your couriers can be an advantage.[1]

Medical Courier Communication is Key

However, maintaining open communication with couriers to report customer service issues can sometimes prove to be difficult. For this reason, medical couriers, who can make-or-break the reputation of a lab, should be given proper attention and support to ensure exceptional customer service.[2]  

Whether the customer openly expresses their frustration during a courier site visit or if the courier simply senses a problem, couriers should have a convenient way to report that issue to lab management and have it electronically recorded. While many courier management systems offer a variety of routing and tracking options, very few offer the ability to report customer service issues.

Laboratory Outreach Tools for Courier Customer Service

Providing your medical couriers with support tools like MCE is an easy and convenient way for them to quickly notify lab administrators or customer service reps about outreach customer issues.

How is this done? Essentially, in the MCE administrative website, administrators can create a “customized note and email recipient” for courier site visits. During any customer site visit a courier using the MCE mobile app can select any “customized note” and, by doing so, send an automated email to the appropriate recipient notifying them of the customers issue or request.

Examples of customized notes and email recipients could be:

Customer Note                                  Notification Email

Supply Request                                   [email protected]

Customer Complaint                           [email protected]

Pre-analytic Training Request             [email protected]

Call Back Request                                [email protected]

Competitor Notification                      [email protected]

Once a notification is received the recipient or administrator can review the couriers site visit in MCE for more note details or call the courier at a convenient time to discuss further. Automating these types of functions eliminates the human error of “forgetting”, keeps an electronic record of issues that are reported, and ultimately brings your customer service to a higher level.

While efficient routing, dispatching, and specimen tracking are important in medical courier operations, customer service and tools to improve it are invaluable and should also be heavily considered for your outreach labs couriers management system. Contact MCE today if you are interested in learning more about our medical courier management system and how outreach laboratories utilize it to improve customer service, routing, dispatching, specimen tracking, and more!

[1] https://www.medlabmag.com/article/1790

[2] https://www.mlo-online.com/home/article/13009255/service-excellence-in-the-laboratory