Managing customer relationships in private health care facilities: A study with reference to Greater Noida city of Uttar Pradesh

Abstract

Customer relationship management (CRM) which has overriding significance for any business is no less significant for hospital services. Hospitals are most important elements in any health care delivery system. A hospital plays a major role in maintaining and restoring the health of the people. Care of the sick and injured, preventive health care, health research, and training of medical and paramedical staff are general broad functions of a hospital. It involves to the outpatient and inpatient hospital services and on many occasions emergency medical services. An important resource in a hospital is a human resource. This should be particularly emphasized. This should be particularly emphasized in the content of a hospital since relationship of medical staff plays important role in treating patients - the hospital customers. In health care, CRM practices are essentially patient - focused strategies that involve effective management of hospital interface and interaction with patients. Effective CRM practices in a hospital may mean providing services related information to a patient very quickly. Responding to the patent appointment and an admission requests promptly, dealing with patient queries and complaints expeditiously, exercising all kinds of flexibilities in serving patients to the patients. This research paper made an attempt to analyze the factors influencing the customers to select the hospital and to suggest better ways and means to retain the customers. For the study, the researcher has collected data from 200 respondents of 10 private hospitals located in Greater Noida city. For this purpose stratified random sampling method was used to select the samples. The present study highlights the extent of utilization of the hospital services by the selected sample respondents. It also shed light on the common problems faced by the respondents. The major features of the service sectors especially on hospital performance is projected in order to utilize the services as per the expectation of the patients (customer). The collected data were analyzed through percentage, average, range, standard deviation and weighted average. Chi-square test was also employed to find the associationship of overall satisfaction with different demographic variables. Likert’s scaling technique is used to identify the customer preference and satisfaction on hospital services. Henry Garrets ranking method is also used to judge the ranking especially on the hospital services.