Medical researcher Wendy Levinson recorded hundreds of conversations between doctors and their patients, to find out why some doctors get sued and others don’t.

The answer was three minutes. It turned out the surgeons who had never been sued spent three minutes longer with their patients than those who were sued (18.3 minutes, versus 15 minutes).

More importantly, they were far more likely to make comments that involved the patient in what was happening, such as “First, I’ll examine you, and then we’ll talk the problem over”. They listened actively and laughed more than the doctors who were sued. The quality of medical information they gave wasn’t any better. It was the way they interacted that differed.

It gets stranger: recordings of doctor-patient conversations were made and the words were removed via computer. All that was left was intonation and inflection – the rise and fall of the voices. Independent judges were asked to rate these doctors for warmth, hostility and dominance, knowing nothing about them but the sound of their voice – not even the words they spoke. They accurately predicted which doctors would be sued and which not.

What’s this got to do with you and your customers? It’s the ‘E’ word, of course – Empathy. Try listening to how your people talk to customers and see if you think there’s room for improvement.

One obvious example to think about – If you have time limits on your customer phone calls for incoming queries, just how much customer dissatisfaction are you creating out there by pushing customers off the phone to keep the calls under the time limit?

You can buy the book here or check out Malcolm Gladwell's website

New Comment