Everyone needs more innovation knowledge to seek innovative ways to improve the customer experience consistently in an ever-changing world. Most higher learning institutions champion cultivating innovative culture among the learners by making it one of the primary requirements of graduating from an MBA program. The new understanding of innovation and its influence on service delivery enhances one’s perspective on creativity and innovation. This reflective essay will elaborate on how innovation knowledge changes thinking and how people attend to work, specifically how innovativeness can ensure quality service delivery and foster good customer experience.
Before completing the innovation course, one of the requirements in the MBA program, one may perceive innovation as a system of tools and technical know-how that could be employed for particular problems. However, during the course content, it’s learned that innovation is beyond what is known about it as just a set of tools; the understanding shifts to the new perception that innovation capitalizes on creativity, experimentation, and constant improvement to create value from ideas (Nambisan, Wright & Feldman, 2019). This comprehensive knowledge has changed the approach to one role and, in particular, that of the customer service department.
For instance, currently, innovation has taken a new course when it comes to customer relations. Most organizations persuade their team to attend to customer complaints with an innovative mindset. Instead of simply handling the complaint and moving on, it is seen as an opportunity to research and examine the primary cause of the issue, which draws divergent idea generation by engaging all the stakes to come up with creative solutions that will mitigate similar complaints occurring in the future (von, Polthier & Kuester, 2021). This proposition can lead to declining repeated complaints and foster increased customer satisfaction.
Additionally, the class helps to acknowledge that innovation fundamentally impacts the customer service experience. By constantly brainstorming new ways to advance the customer experience, we can identify ourselves from the same industry players and build cohesive relationships with our customers. This innovation has become essential in today’s digital era (Purwati et al., 2021). Clients have more diverse alternatives than ever before. They are speedy to shift to a competitor service delivery entity if they are dissatisfied with their experience in services rendered.
One of the critical ways we can deploy innovation to our customer service is by incorporating technology. For instance, adopting chatbots on websites to instantly answer frequently asked questions and offer direct support can improve the delivery of services to customers in various industries (Adam, Wessel & Benlian, 2021). This practice can significantly decrease the frequency and the number of calls directed to the customer service team. Decreasing the number of calls made gives room to concentrate on more complex matters requiring human assistance. Furthermore, adopting a feedback system that permits clients to rate their experience and offer suggestions for advancing is facilitated by enhancement in innovation knowledge. This system can point out areas that need improvement while helping customers ascertain constant commitment to advancing service.
Innovation fundamentally influences the Complaint Management department. Enhancing one’s knowledge of innovation is essential in perceiving complaints as a reliable source of reliable feedback in pursuing innovative reforms in an organization (Heinonen & Strandvik, 2020). For instance, upon receiving a complaint, one can take it as an opportunity to reform service quality by examining the complaint to understand the issue’s primary cause and devise creative solutions to prevent similar complaints from occurring in the future. This perception can significantly reduce the number of repeat complaints while at the same time increasing the efficiency and effectiveness of the overall service delivery.
In the constantly changing business environment, innovation has become one of the essential considerations to incorporate in service delivery. The innovation course helps in understanding that the survivors of today’s competitive business world are the ones who accept to adapt to changes (Müller, Buliga & Voigt, 2021). This understanding can help employ new ways to advance services. This practice can ensure the best possible experience that coincides with the client’s expectations and needs, which helps retain customers for long-term relationships. For instance, an organization can institute a quality management system that examines data analytics to determine potential areas for improvement. This system can keep track of the changes and patterns in customer complaints and feedback, which can significantly aid in taking corrective plans to improve service provision.
Innovation is critical in ensuring that an entity remains competitive. In addition, innovation is vital in pursuing growth and profitability goals in an organization (Lüdeke‐Freund, 2020). By finishing an innovation course, one learns the essence of instituting a business model innovation, which encompasses creating new methods of delivering value to clients. For example, this can be applied in navigating new patient care modules or coming up with alternatives to smoothen administrative procedures.
Another field of innovation that is essential to organizations is open innovation. It encompasses working with external parties; in health care, patients, healthcare providers, and technology corporations can be integrated into seeking solutions to organizational challenges. Collaborating with these partners aims to develop new products and services (Bigliardi et al., 2020). By collaborating with such interested parties, the organization draws insights, comprehends its clients’ needs and expectations, and capitalizes on solutions to meet such needs. For instance, holding regular meetings with regular patients and visitors of the Women’s Wellness and research center can help identify areas of patients’ dissatisfaction and innovative ways to solve them. Moreover, fostering a culture of close innovation at work by engaging customer service representatives and HMC staff who deal with patients daily and encourage them to participate with their ideas and solutions by utilizing their knowledge of patient’s needs and the hospital’s existing resources can enable the hospital in identifying a new approach to patient care and improve its overall efficiency.
An innovative strategy ensures that an entity lags ahead of the curve. This strategy comprises continuously examining the market for new changes and opportunities and having the potential to cope with the changing conditions (Caballero-Morales, 2021). Drawing and implementing innovative roadmaps that help corporate entities stay competitive is critical in customer service. These new innovative plans streamline the provision of services fostering high-quality service delivery.
Innovation concepts can be applied in customer service, particularly health care provision, by establishing a new patient engagement module. This new module of treatment arrangement can be achieved by working with external parties, including technology enterprises, to develop an application allowing patients to view their health records, book appointments, and converse with their healthcare professionals (Lee & Lee, 2020). Adopting the application of the current technology and mutually working with external partners offers a more satisfying and convenient client experience (Ameis et al., 2020). Deploying this application into use increases patients’ interaction with their healthcare providers and efficiency in scheduling appointments. Another example is the exploration of new customer service methods, which could be by adopting artificial intelligence to automate critical customer service tasks, including responding to more frequent inquiries or facilitating appointments (Ughulu, 2022). By adopting artificial intelligence, the professional support team can concentrate on more complex roles and offer a more personalized service to clients.
Furthermore, the installation of a digital dashboard is an innovative way that allows customers to evaluate the quality of the service provided. Such rating on the services rendered can help identify problems and take prompt corrective actions. In helping an organization to stay ahead of its competitors, scheduling a regular meeting monthly with patients’ focus groups who interact with the hospital to enquire about the problems they face during their visits and understand some of the innovative ideas they suggest as part of the solutions is critical.
In today’s swiftly evolving world in health care, particularly in customer service, it is imperative to remain ahead of this constantly advancing field of digital advancements, forward-thinking social approaches, and VUCA-style innovative strategies.
Revolutionizing business practices through cutting-edge technologies constitutes the essence of digital innovation. In customer service, this paradigm shift can be embedded into practice by creating modern applications or platforms enabling individuals to access medical amenities from afar (Moon & Ha, 2019). A case in point is developing a mobile application empowering patients with diverse options such as booking their appointments, communicating seamlessly with doctors, and receiving virtual consultations, thus resulting in heightened ease of use and convenience for all stakeholders involved.
Social innovation pertains to creating unique approaches to solving societal and ecological issues. Within the healthcare domain, social innovation may encompass designing unprecedented initiatives targeting factors that shape health outcomes, such as poverty and the availability of medical care services (Geyer, Petersen & Schmitt, 2022). Take, for example, a program offering education on maintaining good physical health; this is an exceptional approach to averting chronic ailments.
Innovation amidst volatility, uncertainty, complexity, and ambiguity (VUCA) requires one to recognize the constantly shifting nature of our world (Almeida & Souza, 2018). By doing so, it helps in the magnification of opportunities rather than obstacles. Regarding healthcare customer service provision, accepting change is crucial for implementing VUCA innovation. An excellent example could be creating a Chabot system that delivers instantaneous responses – an experiment aimed at enhancing response time and overall client satisfaction with services available through automation.
Adopting VUCA innovation opens them up to amplified risk and unpredictability. Incorporating novel methodologies brings unfavorable consequences that could lead to decreased consumer approval and harm an institution’s reputation (Almeida & Souza, 2018). Accordingly, before carrying out any strategies involving this form of innovation, a meticulous evaluation must be conducted on its prospective advantages and liabilities.
In conclusion, innovation knowledge has enormously influenced thinking and how one approaches his / her work in providing services to customers. Innovation is perceived as a mindset that focuses on creativity, experimentation, and continuous improvement. By employing this mindset in customer service and complaint management, an organization can differentiate itself from the other players in the same industry, offering the best possible experience for clients. Quality in service delivery can be fostered by applying technology, feedback synthesizing systems, and innovatively managing customer complaints, improving customer satisfaction. Additionally, by acknowledging the significance of innovation in pursuit of organizational growth and success by embarking on business model innovation, open innovation, and innovative strategy, organizations can establish new solutions that enable them to provide services that coincide with the needs of their clients and remain competitive in the market. Client support in healthcare should acknowledge and value the pivotal role of revolutionary ideas in propelling organizational expansion and triumph. The embracement of digital breakthroughs, social advancement, and VUCA (volatility, uncertainty, complexity, ambiguity) headway appropriately positions it to create trailblazing solutions tailored toward enhancing clients’ satisfaction levels while keeping at bay potential competitors. Moving forward, I will constantly apply the innovative knowledge acquired during my program course to my work and encourage my team to do the same. By exploring new methods to improve our service, we can attain higher service delivery that meets our client’s ever-changing needs and specifications while remaining competitive in the market.
References
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