Marc Mandel

We've already taken a number of close looks at the payers and how healthcare reform coming out of the current administration is forcing the powerful hand of change, but let's take a fresh look at providers and especially, hospitals.

Having had the personal misfortune of being a patient in a hospital a month ago for my very first time, I wanted to share some observations about the experience.

While I came into the hospital via the emergency room and because I was transported by ambulance I was wisked into the triage process rather than being left for an unpredictably long amount of time in the waiting room, being brought in was where the positive patient experience ended and the mismanagement and bureaucracy began.

The admitting nurse took my name and insurance information while another took my vitals.The grilling continued with duplicative information being provided to a series of interrogators for close to 20 minutes prior to them strapping on my ID wristband...

As I’ve often written and spoken about, we as professionals in our respective industries and companies need to come to terms with the opinion that employees, our human capital create our company’s customer experience. As a collective of individuals, employees set the cadence and tone of their customer interactions, decide when and how to empathize, agree to break down previous organizational challenges such as inward facing silos or product centric thinking and truly align with customers and delight them.

Highly engaged employees who are empowered to truly serve their customers and who have the right mindset of how to are often rewarded with customer delight, loyalty and profits for their employer. Conversely, those that are simply going through the motions in their customer interactions are often transparent in their detachment and will soon be seen for who and what they are by both coworkers and worse, customers.

This holds true for all employees, whether customer...

It seems that I'm noticing a greater than ever number of once significant retailers closing their doors. Only last month I wrote about Borders and how in my opinion, had they spent half as much effort and resources innovating a unique and memorable Borders customer experience rather than trying to mimic Barnes & Noble, they'd likely be still relevant and even potentially dominant. Today, I'm going to write about Blockbuster, unfortunately in a very similar vein. 

I remember the first time I visited a Blockbuster video store. It was years ago, when the video industry was littered with independents renting VHS tapes because at $129 for a movie they were just too expensive for most of us to buy. That was long before the DVD, let alone video on demand and iTunes. I remember walking in with my friends, taking in the seemingly endless number of movies on the shelves and wondering how I'd ever run out of video entertainment again.

That was a lifetime ago, it seems.

I just had the pleasure, or maybe experienced the sheer pain and agony of visiting one of the Borders Books locations slated to close as part of their bankruptcy process. The store's specific location doesn't much matter, but for simplicity sake, let's say it's a high traffic mall location. I've been at the store before on prior mall excursions and the store was surprisingly empty each time I went. The specific location is a large, single floor floorplan with approximately 15,000 square feet, if not more. Typically on prior visits there were no more than 20 or 30 other shoppers there each time I went. Somewhat surprising considering the busy mall foot traffic just outside the door.

Today's visit was very different. There were hundreds of people in the store, literally arguing with one another about who'd be able to take the last $1 2011 swimsuit wall calendar or generic James Dean poster. The walls and windows, you see, were plastered with huge signs saying the store is...