Customer Relations: A Pediatrician's Guide Inspired by PayPal

I'm Holly Wehment, and this is Pediatrics Now, cases, updates, and discussions for the busy pediatric practitioner.

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I'm really excited about our topic today. We're talking about what can we learn in medicine about customer service from the Vice President of Customer Service for PayPal and Venmo. And joining me here on the podcast today is Matthew Anderson. Hi, Holly. Thank you for having me today. Thank you so much for being here, Matthew. you. PayPal and Venmo are the same company? We are indeed, yes. Venmo is one of our many products.

And if you're not a current PayPal or Venmo user, I would invite you to come on board. So you have a long career. You have a lot of experience in banking. Is that where you developed this passion for customer service? Yeah. In fact, my first job out of college to earn some money as I was going on to pursue some higher education was I took a phone service job, actually, for a very small startup organization. It was my first time on the phones.

From there, I went and did some process re-engineering and marketing, etc. But I always had this kind of callback to the customer we always say is our most important asset and our most important kind of part of all of our businesses. And so I was drawn to how can I continue to help them?

So whether it was my time with General Electric, with American Express, with Citibank, and then now with PayPal, have always been drawn to how do we just take care of customers and help them get on to do the things that they want to do? What's their most important part of their day? How do we get them on to do those things instead of having to call and worry about talking to us? You've been managing large-scale global service centers focused on taking care of customers?

Yes, for the past now 20 plus years. I won't give a definitive day, but 20 plus years. Yes. Anywhere from teams from a couple hundred now up to 12,000 or so people around the globe. So in medicine, a phone call is the first touch point. You have some really great principles that you recommend that we could all learn from. The four principles that I look at and that we try to share with my team is we always talk about these kind of four critical components.

So the first one is know me. And what I mean by that is our customer is a human being at the other end of any contact. No customer of mine wakes up in the morning and says to themselves, gee, I want to call customer service. I really want to talk to my banker. I want to talk to my financial representative. They're calling because there's a need, there's a drive, there's something that is broken or something that they don't understand.

And so recognizing that there's a human being on the other end of that contact, that they want to go see a movie or read a book or go on a jog or take a nap, something other than contact you is kind of a critical component. In addition to understanding that their time is valuable, also that they have needs and desires and concerns.

And the more that we can humanize that contact and understanding that it's a person and that they are valuable to us and their time is valuable just kind of sets the tonality for any of our service experiences. And how do we best do that? I was calling a dental office to reschedule because my daughter was sick and just the person on the other end of line just kind of went forward to just rescheduling. And I think that she was, she was very sick and had a fever.

And then it was like, okay, how about next Wednesday? And it just felt a little cold. Yeah. So we often refer to those as transactional activities within, especially within the businesses that I have worked for. I can list off the top of my head, as I'm sure many of your listeners can, if they needed to contact a bank, what types of things would they contact a bank or their financial institution about.

And if we were to ponder those, we could probably come up with 10 or 15, maybe 20 of those that would be the top contact types that anyone calls us for. And so our teammates, that's what we refer to as our telephone agents, my teammates. Are pretty expert at those types of things as soon as they know they know what transactional activities to undertake to get them out and get them through the process that becomes a problem.

Because we look at it if you if we're not careful as a transactional activity versus what i tried to train with my teams which is a relationship activity again after that first principle know me know that I have value, know that my time is important. Then we get into the second premise, which is understand my problem. And as we think about that, it's really trying to understand not only what the customer is asking for, but why are they asking? How does this affect the things that they're doing?

So in the example of you and your child trying to reschedule the appointment, to the person on the other end of the phone call, that was a transaction. They literally needed to, I'm sure, go into their scheduling system, click a button, move an appointment, unclick a button or click another button, confirm it, and then send the SMS message or text message out to you to remind you of the appointment.

But to you, you're a concerned parent who's got an ailing child, who you are desperate to get them in to see the dentist or whatever they need to get in for. But you also have this sick person in your household that you are caring for. So transitioning that from a transactional activity into a relationship.

And by the way, these don't have to take a lot of time, but that's what we try to infuse in our teammates and our agents globally to be able to take that time and understand and really help people feel connected. Seems like it would make the person who's leading the call, answering the call, it would feel better to do that. Oh, yeah. In fact, in my world, time is money. We often try to manage as quickly as we can, helping people navigate through the system.

Obviously, if you think of my business like the grocery store line, by the time someone gets in line and they're ready to be serviced, we want to get them through our process as efficiently as possible. So we have all kinds of metrics that help us manage that efficiency. So relationship building in that space does not need to take a lot of time. What it does require, though, is some investment. That being said, what we found is the more that you can do that, actually, the quicker things go.

And I've actually got a quick example in my own life in regards to a health care experience that I had. One of the local hospitals is... And you're a father of five. Yes, I am a father of five. So hospital visits are not our favorite because when we have to take one of our children down, we've got to think of all the things you have to worry about taking someone to the hospital.

Making sure the other kids are where they need to be, making sure that the right bags are packed with the right equipment and materials that we might need. I've got a daughter who's special needs, so that requires some additional thought about who's going to be where and how do we coordinate. And so getting to the facility in itself is a task, even before we walk in the hospital doors for care. And stress is high. Oh, my goodness, yes. By the time we're walking in the doors.

It's a relief to be there, number one. And you gear up for the second round of stress that you're about to enter into as you go through admitting and sharing all the information about what's going on and trying to help diagnose and go through all that activity. So one series of stress has built, kind of abated, and another series of stress has now been introduced.

This experience I'll share is actually a very positive one. As we walked into the hospital and went through and met with the nurse for the first time. The first nurse we actually interacted with was very transactional. She came in, had a quick conversation with us about, oh, what brings you here? And did some, you know, supplemental conversations about the weather or, oh, I'm sorry that you're here, but it felt very hollow.

The second nurse, as she came in, as the shift changed, transitioned through, we ended up with our second care nurse. The dialogue was very different. It was the same type of, oh, I'm sorry that you are here. But the question that was asked is, I know that you are parents of this special needs person of my daughter. I'm here to help care for her needs and your needs. Is there anything that you would like me to know that would be helpful in what I can do in providing care?

It's the same question as what can I do for you? But the difference is acknowledging that we are experts in caring for our special needs daughter. We know all the tricks. We know she's nonverbal. We know what her sounds mean and how they would affect. We know how she likes to be positioned when she sleeps. We know what toys that she likes. We know these things. We are experts in this field.

And having this nurse just acknowledge that we were experts and having her say, I'm here to support you as you help support me transition the entire conversation away from a transactional interaction into a relationship interaction. And the first words out of my mouth were actually, yes, we need these two things if you could help us. And she came in and bingo, bingo, we were set up and had all that we need. And we were, the care for that day was exceptional. We loved it.

It's really just acknowledging that the parents are there. They know what's going on. The child is there. They know what's going on in many cases, if not most cases, and really just understanding it's a person that's there because that's what they came for is understand my problem. That's the second principle is know me and then understand my problem. And once you get to that point, now you can go on with the other principles and work your way through the entire mantra.

How do you instill when it's the 50th call that the person is in that day to really care? Yeah, so we have a statement that we live by, that I ask my team to live by, which is clear is kind. And anyone who's ever called customer service always hears that message at the beginning of the contact, right? This call may be recorded or monitored for quality purposes. We do take that seriously. Actually, we do actually listen to and quality control contacts.

You do actually listen. Oh, absolutely. We live and breathe by that type of feedback of customers because that's the insight that as leadership we need to look at to say, how can we be better at helping people navigate through our systems? How can we train our frontline people to be more responsive, be more empathetic, be more relationship-based? How can we help speed up the process, help our teammates navigate the process more effectively and efficiently?

So one of the things we do with Clear is Kind is we make sure that we actually are providing feedback. Many people shy away from feedback because they don't want to offend, they don't want to hurt other people's feelings, they feel as though it might not be their place. But I happen to believe very, very strongly that. Feedback is a gift. And I think coaching is a very critical component of that. I think of Olympic athletes like Michael Phelps, arguably the best swimmer the world has ever known.

Michael Phelps has a coach and that coach watches what he does. He gives him feedback. He tells him what he's doing well. He tells him where he could have opportunities to improve. And so whether you print these mantras, whether you exercise them and pull them into your daily lives, we actually within my business, we take one of these a month. This is the way that we do it is my team knows them all, but we take one of them a month.

And we actually have conversations about how are we focusing on building the relationship? How are we focusing on understanding the customer's problem? And then as we go through the last two, solving that problem and then deepening the relationship, which are the other two principles, for us, we take a month and we kind of focus on that as the theme. And we give each other feedback and we watch for opportunities in those cycles to help us improve and be better.

Okay. So the first principle, know the person. We like to refer to it as know me. So we take it from a customer's lens. So the four principles are know me. Number two, understand my problem. Number three, resolve my problem. Number four is deepen the relationship. Are we ready to move on to the solve my problem? Absolutely. Certainly.

We hear this a lot in medicine. If someone's asking about solving the problem, we all hear, and of course, we all have policies, like our policy, or that's not our policy. Is that something you recommend that is said to customers? Actually, in my business, those words are against policy. If I can use that terminology. No, we try to stray away from that. Customers don't care about your policy. They don't care about why they don't care about the thing that you are telling them no for.

What they want to understand is what can be done. In my business, I refer to that as a service, also known as a service yes. And usually that word starts with a word like unfortunately, if you ever hear that in any service experience. Unfortunately, you're pretty much guaranteed that there's a policy that sits behind that principle. However, in my business, we do not allow our teammates to say That's against policy, therefore we can't.

What we do instead is we redirect the customer to what we can do. So as an example, if you were to call up and want us to transfer money, for example, to an unknown customer. Our policy is not to do that for a thousand reasons. So instead of me saying, unfortunately, Holly, I can't do that for you. It's against policy.

Instead, we look at it from the customer's perspective, which is, unfortunately, Holly, to protect you as well as to protect others, without authentication, we are unable to transfer funds between customers because we want to protect your funds in what you're sending, and what you're receiving to make sure that it is going to the right person. Now, in order for me to do that, here's what we can do for you to help guide you through how to get the thing that you are potentially wanting.

An example of this in my own life is, as you mentioned, I am a father of five, and there have been many, many times where we have been escorted out of the hospital in a wheelchair. Well, I should say that differently. My wife has been escorted or wheeled out on a wheelchair. From a policy perspective, I'm smart enough to know that that is so that we can make sure that if there's an accident that befalls, if someone were to trip and fall, the hospital would be liable.

My wife might stumble or medically something might be happening where she passes out. All kinds of horrible things could occur. Someone walking away with the wrong baby. Absolutely. Right. The most horrible things could occur. And so in one of our hospital stays, as we were walking out, my wife actually did say that she's fine walking out. And the nurse at the time said, oh, no, you are a new mother and we have a chariot that is awaiting for you.

And we would like to parade you through our hospital halls like the princess that you are for giving birth to such a wonderful little person. Now, my wife had wanted to walk out. She wanted to walk out. And now you bet wanted to ride in that chariot, princess waving as she passed people. Putting our child in the sky like Mufasa does or like Rafiki does in The Lion King with Symba's birth, announcing to the animals of this wonderful arrival.

So same activity, but not cornered in our policy is really it's here's why we can't with whatever we can share, because I don't want you also to, you know, betray competences, et cetera. But just reframing that just changes the whole paradigm about how people think about what you're telling them. It no longer becomes a no. It becomes a, oh, here's why and what we can do if you have a different answer you'd like. Wow. That is a beautiful example. Yeah.

If we think about those relationship opportunities, people buy your products because of what it does and how it makes their life easier. That's how people interact with your products and your functionality. We refer to these moments where someone does find some particular point of friction as a moment of truth. That's kind of the phrase that we use in the service world. And these moments of truth are very rare and very few in between.

And people talk about them, both good or ill. and so this is not only affects your interactions with the person themselves but how they feel about your broader business marketing implications it goes on and on and on and on and these effects of these activities reverberate through multiple areas of someone's purchasing life cycle you know so many pediatricians are really good at this but but find that almost it's like a magical moment It can turn something in that is the policy to do,

but turn it into a childlike or something that families can relate to that could be pretty magical. I've had a similar experience with a cast removal, and the individual that was removing the cast actually turned to my son and said, this is kind of loud. Let's see if we can sing louder than this tool will be. And so my son geared up to sing his lungs out as this cast was removed. And it didn't change what the doctor had done. It didn't change any of the activities as to what was happening.

But my son thought it was exceptionally funny that he was trying to sing louder than this vibrating implement was going. And it just turned it into a very different experience. I love that. That's just such a wonderful example. When you're talking about knowing the person in front of you, how important is saying the name and then what if... Especially with staff? It's not done as often because maybe they're afraid of getting the name wrong, which would be bad. Or do you have any advice there?

Yeah. So what we have found is, if you look at the research, people do love to hear the sound of their own name. Absolutely. It is one, if I say, Holly, even the sound of your own name sparks something inside of you. And so I would say use it if you feel comfortable using it. I try to, in all of our customer service experiences. We try to make sure that we at least say it one time so that we can acknowledge or make sure there's that connection.

And as you can imagine, since we are a global company, we are servicing in multiple languages across multiple countries, dealing with every name. Ethnicity, race, gender you can imagine. And there is no harm or foul in asking someone how to pronounce their name. In fact, we do it quite frequently where we can ask and say just in an honest approach, I'm unsure how to pronounce your name. Would you mind saying it for me one time so that I can get the proper pronunciation?

Or you might say, I see your name is Holly. Have I said that correctly? And people will correct you if needed, and they will do so very kindly if you approach it from that same kindness or perspective. People with difficult names, especially where that name is not ubiquitous across the culture, or maybe it's very unique to them, they know what their name is and they deal with this all the time globally. So just face it up front. In this case, we are back to clear is kind.

And by saying to someone, I'm unsure about how to approach this, do I have this right? Or would you mind saying it one time so I can get it the correct way? People will lean into that. They will gravitate towards and be very thankful that you took the opportunity. That's a great example. And in fact, you had an experience where your youngest daughter who has special needs needed a catheter.

I'm happy to share that story. So we went in, my wife and I, if you recall what we said before about my five children, And whenever my darling daughter has to be admitted to the hospital for any reason, we have to, as a family, divide and conquer. And we then work in shifts and we're navigating children to various recreational activities and home and in bed for dinner and all the things that you need to do.

So we had gone through one of these changes where my wife, I was taking the evening shift and my wife was going home to get some self-time and take a shower and all the things that she needed to do. So I walked in the room right after the shift change and the nurse came in and said, oh, we need to get a urine sample. And are you okay if we come in and do a cath? And I said, certainly not a problem. And so as I'm sitting there, six nurses descended up in the room and they then

are getting the cath that they need done. And they are literally holding my daughter down. Who's wailing at the top of her lungs. This is, it's a terrifying experience. It's horrible. And I'm sitting there watching it going, oh my goodness, I hope this isn't how it always works. And they were able to get the cath done and get everything taken care of. And I'm now over soothing my daughter and finally get her calmed down. And we were finished for that particular event.

And after about an hour or so, my wife calls and said, how are things going? I said, they're going great, except for we had to do this cath. That was nightmarish. And Shannon said, what? And I said, oh, yeah, they came in and took a cath. Then she said, well, why didn't you just do it? And I said, well, nobody asked. No one had taken the time to stop and say, hey, we need to take this urine sample.

How do you guys usually do this at home? And my response would have been, oh, we straight cath Dylan all the time. And if you need me to cath her into a bag so we can get her measurements, happy to do that. We've been to the hospital multiple times. We know exactly what needs to happen. And it would have been a non-event. Now, the reason how this is so important is the next time that same nurse came in, Dylan had a reaction of, oh, my goodness, this is going to happen again.

And it took us three or four nurse changes before Dylan got back to the, oh, they're not going to strap me back down again, trying to do this because dad and mom can do it with no impact at all.

So had somebody just taken one minute to say hey here's what we need do you guys have you done this how is this normally done with your family we would have been able to answer and the response would have been oh no brainer okay do that thing i'll be back in two minutes make sure you captain this bag so i can get a measurement we'd say great done this a hundred times that's a great example of listening and also reading the room

and really asking some more questions so that you can be clear, which is kind. Yeah. Again, know me, understand my problem and solve my problem. Let's solve the problem. I'm talking to Matthew Anderson here on Pediatrics Now. He's the vice president for customer service for PayPal and Venmo. And we're talking about what can we learn about customer service in medicine from the principles utilized by PayPal and Venmo.

You're listening to Pediatrics Now, sponsored by CPAN, No Call Too Small, the Department of Pediatrics at UT Health San Antonio and University Hospital. We'll be right back.

We're back now. I'm talking to Matthew Anderson, vice president for customer service for PayPal and Venmo. We're talking about the third principle, which is solving the problem. What else do we need to know about doing that? Because it can be so tough as we're trying to figure out how to solve the problem when that patient is in the exam room. Yeah, absolutely. All of our businesses do the same type of activity.

I think in the medical profession, it is a little bit harder because there is, when we think about solving the problem, sometimes we think of that as the end state solution of whatever treatment strategy we've determined to undertake, or we think of the end game activity that we're taking. When my business with my teammates, when we think about solving the problem, it is from the moment we understand the problem, we look across the entire spectrum

of, well, what were the drivers? What caused the issue? What do we need to do to resolve it? How do we get that taken care of? And we have to guide the customer in many instances through steps that they need to undertake. As an example, within the PayPal and Venmo sphere, one of our main product premises is that we protect our customers. That's protecting their data. That is protecting their funds. That is protecting their relationships, that is protecting their anonymity.

It's all the protections that our products and services offer. So when a customer calls and says that they want to do something. Oftentimes we might need them to actually send us something or share some additional information. And as we walk someone through, it might be very easy for us to say, oh, simply take a copy of your driver's license and text it to this number. That's the transactional activity. The same action, if we to say, we need to validate your identity.

We can do that through a couple of ways. If you have your driver's license and cell phone handy, we can do it through that mechanism. If that is not convenient for you, we do have other options available. And we're guiding the customer through the process. And sometimes it's through the diagnostic process. Sometimes it's through the activity process. And in the hospital setting, I can think of this in kind of an analogous way.

Recognize that when we as hospital patients or patrons are in the hospital, the solution for us is not just the, we need to give this medicine to run its course so that we can then take labs again tomorrow to then evaluate whether or not you can be discharged. The problem that we're solving is, and I know your nursing staff knows this very well, we are working on your comfort. We are working on your care.

We're working on making sure that the parents are also feeling well, that the patients are feeling well. The problem is not just the dose of medicine that needs to run its course. Solving the problem is helping the customer navigate the activities that need to occur and helping keeping them in the loop and bringing them along that journey.

And in many cases it's helping them do it in a way that is convenient for them or can be convenient for your business if there's things that they can do to help. One example of that that we leverage in my family is whenever we go to the hospital now, we actually have a laminated sheet. We laminated it because we were using it so frequently of all of my daughter's medicines, all the things that she's allergic to, the precautions that we have on her, the surgeries by date that are listed.

So whenever we get in with the doctor in that conversation, we can kind of hand them the cheat sheet. They glance over what that's there and say, okay, got it. Now I know. And we can start to talk. So we can, we just have found that for us, that's a way to navigate the solve my problem in a way that makes it easy for us and easy for the doctor. I'm not advertising that, you know, everybody needs to do that with their children's medical history.

But for us, that is a way that we made it so that it's easy to not only solve the actual root cause of the problem, but all the surrounding stuff that does also inhabit the problem itself. As another example of this, when in my business, when a customer calls in and we initially take that phone contact or chat, whatever that issue is, my teammates go in and they try to rapidly not only know and understand who Holly is, what do we know about her?

You know, she's obviously a working mom, has children, all the wonderful things about you. But we also then start to look at your account and say, what things might be happening in your environment that might be causing or be related to this problem that you're about to share with me?

That's understanding the problem. And then when you start to share the actual problem itself, I can look and say, oh, in addition to the problem that you are sharing, there might be some adjacency here or some things that might not look related, but are related. And how can we work together to help you navigate through this activity as simply as possible?

Because your time is valuable. Our time is valuable. And we want to make sure that you have the best experience that you can so that you can get on and do the things that matter most to you. How important is it to be on time? I know in medicine, it's a frenetic pace, and our pediatric practitioner listeners, a lot of them are seeing 40 patients a day. Obviously, we can't always be on time. They're doing so much and taking care of patients.

But what do you advise there? And if you are running late, what should happen? Great question. So in my business, one of the ways that we try to keep everything moving, ultimately, you are absolutely right. Time is money for both of our businesses from just a fiduciary responsibility for running and managing a business. For our patients and customers, their time is important. Remember the Nomi principle. Their time is important as well. They've arranged things on a schedule to be

there to the best of their ability. Now, I know that patients are going to run behind. But also life just gets in the way. And let's acknowledge that life does get in the way and we know that there's going to be some variability in those interactions. So for us as an example, in my world, we do have kind of target times that we would like all phone calls to kind of be resolved in. Where needed, we take more time where necessary.

And oftentimes when we have an opportunity to end something early, we try to do so. But we do have a kind of set time. And I think that parallels well with what your pediatricians and other doctors are doing in their schedules as well. But there's a couple of things that we try to do to help, in our case, our teammates and our customers navigate that efficiently. Number one is we do try to stay on time, which I think is a central tenet that we all could agree upon.

Number two, we also try to be transparent in what people can expect. So as an example, and you've probably had this happen to you before, when you phone a service center, They might tell you in advance, thank you for calling, your call is important to us, the next available agent should be with you in 3 minutes, or 60 seconds, or your wait time is 15 minutes.

So setting that expectation up front helps the person adjust to what to expect if you don't say that in my world after 90 seconds after 90 seconds for each additional 10 seconds that someone waits their ire their anger their angst builds every 10 seconds so for us setting that expectation is a critical component, number one.

Number two, inside the conversation, if we have a customer who might want to tell us a lengthy story or might be droning on about something that's not related, with the relationship care principles in mind, we do often remind our customers. Unfortunately, Holly, thank you for sharing this story with me so far. I've only got a minute or so left, that I can share with you in this context, I have a couple more questions.

Can we jump to that? And setting that expectation within the conversation also helps.

I've had this happen with doctors before in offices where the pediatrician has walked in and said, I'm sorry, we were running very late behind. It's so good to see you and your family again. I only have six minutes that I can spend with you today. I would love to spend more, but I'm unable to. What brings you in today? And just that acknowledgement that we are important, but there is some concern and some time constraints help us jump directly to the case.

Now, will that solve all problems in every event? No. But setting that expectation up front with customers when they enter your facility and doctors or nurses setting that expectation with patients as to what is going to happen or needs to happen or can happen will also go a long way. And that way, I think you could trim off the ones that shouldn't be taking that much time, but unfortunately do, as well as the ones you could speed up.

I would happen to love if my doctor came in and said, I got six minutes with you. Tell me what's busted. Fix it. Walk out the door. I'm not a big need a lot of chatter kind of guy. I'm there for a purpose. Get me in, get me out. What about when it seems like it's easy to say, well, she's busy with other patients or sorry, I was busy with other customers. But as the patient or customer, it doesn't really feel great. Like, OK, yes, but aren't I a customer, too?

Kind of any advice there of what to like if you say that, add on to it and say something about the person in front of you and acknowledge how important it is that customer, too. If someone came in to me from the office staff and said, oh, the doctor is running behind today, it might be a few minutes. Suddenly now you've taken and said, basically, our process is inefficient, therefore you have to suffer.

I don't like the way that that's positioned. A better positioning might be to say something like, as you know, we try to make sure that we provide the best care possible. Are right now our doctor is assisting someone else and taking a few extra minutes to help them navigate through a difficult problem or time. We know your time is important to us. We can spend the same amount of time making sure that you are cared for in the same way.

Or you could also say, unfortunately, we are, again, setting the expectation.

It's taking longer than we anticipated. you are critical to us are there things that we could do with you to help accelerate while you are here the process of getting you through and maybe that's filling out the form or gathering some information where you can or helping you get prepared whatever that case might be to help it make it so that it is not our process is failing but more hey we want to invest the right time in the right spaces.

How can we help you get the benefit of that same activity or outcome? There's probably a very much more eloquent way to say those things, but that's the way that I would look to position it. Not that, hey, we're suffering, but hey, your time is important to us as well. We want to acknowledge that you are waiting. And how can we help you get through this process in a more efficient and effective way when it does become your turn to spend some time with us?

How bad is it even so say it's on the phone or something so that even the person may not see it but for a team member to roll his or her eyes oh actually you cannot see that on the phone but after many years of that i can hear it i know that i know that it does happen, yeah that's that's an area where as human beings as you i'm sure you know our non-verbal cues are often more important than our verbal cues.

And I think that that's the type of behavior that when I catch a teammate on my side doing it, that is a place where Claire is very kind, where we go in and we make sure that we correct that behavior. We exist to take care of customers. That's why we are in the fields that we have chosen to be in. That's why we're doing the things that we are doing. And the moment that we are able to undertake that responsibility seriously, that we are there to care for the people that we service.

This is why I don't refer to my teammates, for example, as agents. Because that dehumanizes the agent. They are teammates. They are part of my team. If I could, I would answer every phone call of my customer and give them the most expert care that I could. I cannot answer that many phone calls in a day.

So I need to find people that will provide the same level of care that I would want provided by me or that I would want provided to me by these individuals that i partner with to provide that service so in the office if i if i were to catch someone doing that yeah we have we we do hold people accountable to those types of activities and i would counsel people just to watch each other for that and if they do it inadvertently,

or whatever the opposite of inadvertent would be vertically i don't know what that opposite would be but whatever they do that they that we would give that feedback to say please don't do that this mom is here. You don't know if she had to take off work to get here. You don't know if she's going through a messy divorce and this is painful for her to be here. We don't know if this is bringing back past issues or problems that she's been with.

Have compassion with the human being that's at the other side of this transaction and help them feel welcome and appreciated and cared for. And when you're working side by side with people and you can share a frustration, that's one thing, but to roll eyes and, and how terrible also even worse if the patient sees that it just makes you feel awful. Oh yes. Do, do that. And by the way, I'm a big fan of, I'm a big fan of rolling eyes.

I'm a big fan of snarky comments. I'm a big fan of all of those types of things, in the privacy of my own home with the, with the appropriate audience where I can share my personal frustrations as a human, not ever a frustration against an individual. And that to me is where the difference is. It's okay to be frustrated, but always remember, I always love when people are so angry and they say, oh, traffic is so bad. Always remember, you are not impacted by traffic. You are traffic.

You are as much of the problem as everybody else is on the road. Right. That's a good point. So you're not in traffic. You are traffic. Bear that in mind. That's a really great point. One thing that I, there's so many things I love about the pediatric world and pediatricians are just in general so nice. And then it might be really hard to, if you see or hear about an employee doing something like that. Have that confrontation. But what I'm hearing is it's really worth it.

Oh, absolutely. Think of the time, effort, and energy that you've culminated in getting that patient there, to have them be a patient, to want to come back and have that care. I will say this definitively. We have had pediatricians that we have invited to special family events. Birthday parties, church activities that we have gone to. We love the care professionals that have cared for us.

And we consider them part of our broader, if you will, part of the inside family for the work that they've done in caring for our daughter especially. So I would hope that your pediatricians and staff know that there are nurses we know by name that we send cards to. And every time we go to a hospital, we take them brownies. And at Christmas, they brought us fudge. I mean, it's those types of relationships go an exceptionally long way.

And I'm not saying that has to be with every care professional that's out there, but that's the impact that medical professionals have on people's lives. We're bringing probably the most important people in our lives to your hands to say, help me make this better. Help me care for this person that is the most important person to me.

Help me. And I'm trusting you to do so. And when you look at it with that lens, rolling eyes then becomes almost insulting to you as an individual, because then it's about you and not about them. That's right. I think that that is really wonderful advice.

And I think, Matthew, you have such a unique perspective with having five kids, a daughter with special needs, and being the vice president for customer service at PayPal and Venmo and having all of this. About a complaint being a golden opportunity. And I love the quote that, In medicine, we're often caring for people in their darkest, most vulnerable hour. So nowhere in the service industry is it more important to treat someone than

kindness, love, and respect every step of the way. Absolutely. So do you have any advice on handling a complaint because it's easy to get defensive and also handling a conflict? A couple of principles that I try to introduce and we live by within our team, which is, to your point, complaints are a golden opportunity. And I always look at them as, in fact, on my teammates' desktop around the globe, I installed or had installed a button that sits in the bottom right-hand corner

of every screen that my teammates touch. Every single one.

And if at any time a customer voices frustration or the teammate feels as though there's some friction within the process or in combination of those two there's something that we feel is wrong, our teammate can click that button and register that as a point of friction in addition to that we listen to all complaints that come in from customers whether that's through letters or through bureaus that sit outside or they leave us feedback in through anonymous or name sources,

if they post something on X, if they post something on Facebook, we listen to all of those. We actually hunt and mine for those opportunities. We are constantly looking for those places and areas of complaint because that is a place where someone is saying, hey, your process in whatever way, shape or form has failed me. Now notice, Holly, that I said process. In a former life, I was what's referred to as a Six Sigma master black belt.

That is a process reengineering specialist that is specifically designed and focused on modifying processes. And one of the base principles of that activity is you never blame the person. You blame the process. Because it's the process that we've established that allows us to then modify. Human behavior is very, very difficult to influence. And if you disagree with me, have a 14-year-old that doesn't want to take the garbage out. You will realize very quickly, the limits of your power.

So trying to get someone to change behavior is really difficult, but helping them navigate through a process is fairly simple. Meaning that if you've got somebody who raises a complaint or a concern, number one, acknowledge that that has occurred, recognize that they do have a voice and that they're not, they're acknowledging something has not worked for them. Now, oftentimes we might say, but that thing was written down. The speed limit sign was clearly posted on the side of the road.

It's clearly there. So people keep speeding through this intersection. Why are they not fixing this? It is posted. They should know better. In my opinion, that's still a failure on my part as a city planner about the way that I've designed the street. So I would start to ask myself, are there better ways that I could modify the process to make people slow down through this intersection or through this area?

And we experience this all the times in our lives. We have places where they've painted the lines differently on the road. Or they might put some bollards up on one side to make traffic kind of condense and slow. They might put in a stop sign or a speed bump, something that modifies the behavior intentionally to help people navigate through the process. So whenever I look at a complaint for me, it rarely is against a person.

In fact, on rare occasion, is it actually behavioral that I need to address unless it truly is behavioral. And in all other cases what we try to do is look at the process what's not working in the process what's not working in the documentation we put together what's not working in the.

Feedback mechanisms that we're providing to people some of those as an example if you're having a hard time in the office going through and giving feedback to people directly because they don't feel comfortable in businesses i've seen them do anonymous feedback sessions where it's more about hey here's one thing you're doing well and one thing that you look to that you could improve on and then posting those up for everyone to see,

not by name, but in general, like this is what our team is working on collectively to help each other navigate through. So there's books and books upon how to kind of give appropriate feedback and coaching, but I would admonish you all that complaints need to become your very, very best friends because that is a wonderful place that people are telling you, here's a place that I am not getting what I need in the best possible way from you.

How can we make it better? And the best part about this, Holly, is if you fix it right, that complaint will never, ever show up again. And suddenly now you have a comparative advantage to anybody who's still fighting with that complaint activity. And so really say to the staff and really think about that, this complaint is a golden opportunity. Absolutely. Embrace them, love them, cherish them, celebrate them. Matthew Anderson, the Vice President of Customer Service for PayPal and Venmo.

Coming up next week, we will talk about conflict resolution and the fourth principle. Pediatrics Now is brought to you by University Health and the Department of Pediatrics at UT Health San Antonio. Don't forget to click on the link in this podcast for free credit that may include CME, MOC, or ethics credit, depending on our topic or podcast. And Matthew, I'm looking forward to hearing more next week. Thank you so much for being on Pediatrics Now. Thank you so much.