. Benevolence Children Hospital* Benevolence Children Hospital has grown steadily over the last decade. They have been fortunate to receive several large sums of charitable donations. This has enabled them to recently add a new surgical wing. This wing is actually a completely new ser- vice the hospital is providing. In the past, children were sent to other area hospitals for surgery. Now, Benevolence Children Hospital can provide surgical services specializ- ing in children's needs. The new surgical wing has come at the perfect time because the population of Widow Creek has grown exponentially in the past three years. Unfortunately, the hospital wasn't prepared for the volume of surgeries. Although they have the physical capac- ity, for example, operating rooms, staff, recovery rooms, etc., they have fallen short on customer care. When Meredith Webb, Benevolence's CEO, read all the complaints concerning the surgical services she saw two glaring issues. When she correlated the complaints to the five service quality dimensions she knew about, Meredith believed that they were weak in responsiveness and empathy. Customers had no complaints with reliability, such as billing. Nor did they have issues with assurance, as in surgeons' skills. The tangibles, such as employee appearance and facility appearance, were always given high ratings. As Meredith examined the data and talked with the families of the patients she began to understand the root cause of their complaints. Communications were poor. Parents didn't feel that they were kept informed in a timely manner about their chil- dren's surgeries. Their perception was that a lot of time passed before any updates were provided. Also, if they had a complaint or a compliment, they didn't know who specifically to name. Since they were extremely stressed because their child was having surgery, they didn't always remember which staff member they interacted with. Meredith talked with her senior staff and they concluded that in many ways the problem was similar to managing queue times. Many of the same emotions and reactions people felt when in a queue were similar to what waiting families were experiencing. Discussion Questions 1. Obviously, hospital personnel wear nametags to identify themselves. However, in the case above, the families are not remembering who they interact with because they are stressed. Recommend a solution that guarantees to eliminate this issue; thus, improve the families' sense of connection to those caring for their children. 2. What actions do you recommend the hospital take to increase the feeling of custom- ized service, thus enhancing empathy? Hint: Think about what restaurants and/or airlines do to enable better communications. 3. Besides the actions or initiatives taken to solve the specific problems mentioned in questions 1 and 2, what additional things can the hospital do to manage perceived waiting times and the issues they cause?