Organizational expertise research methodology for investigation of customer service performance and competencies in physician practices

Healthcare has recently focused upon the impact of customer service on organizational performance and success and has looked at specific attributes of employees to optimize performance. Expertise research has identified high-performing entities, as opposed to low-performing entities, to determine the factors, competencies, and attributes that facilitate high performance.;This study focused upon the investigation of ten physician practices owned by a healthcare system in eastern Pennsylvania. The study specifically measured performance outcomes in 29 items related to customer satisfaction by using a commercial instrument mailed to patients and by comparing employees' ratings of the importance and their practice's proficiency in 17 customer service competencies. These practices were divided into high- and low-performing groups based upon the customer satisfaction scores. After using the median method and the thirds method to divide the practices into high- and low-performing groups, the researcher analyzed the groups for differences in the importance and practice proficiency ratings using ANOVAs, t-tests, and Chi-square analyses.;There were no differences in ratings of the importance of customer service competencies between high- and low-performing practices. The study found differences in the proficiency ratings with personnel in high-performing practices rating their proficiency in the customer service competencies higher than personnel in low-performing practices rated their proficiency. Using the median method of dividing the practices, 12 of the 17 competency proficiency ratings were significantly different and using the thirds method of division, 16 of the 17 competency proficiency ratings were significantly different. Additionally, patients rated the high performing practices significantly higher than the low-performing practices in 22 of 29 items in the median division of practices and 28 of 29 items in the thirds division of practices. Analysis of the expertise research methodologies revealed that it may be advantageous to use the thirds method to insure that attributes of the high- and low-performing groups are accurately identified because the thirds method identified larger differences, yet caution must be exercised in analyzing the impact of the middle performers. The study discusses implications for organization development, performance improvement and future research.