The Right Answer

Like most of you, my wife and I have come to rely on the Internet as our primary link to the outside world. One evening, my wife complained that she couldn’t download one of the few television shows she watches on her laptop. I tried a few of the tricks I know, but failed and told her that it was probably Hulu’s problem and not ours. However, over the next week, slow download speeds continued to be a problem. But it was an intermittent condition and seemed to begin as the sun went down and didn’t occur during the daytime.

I called our Internet provider’s tech support line and described the issues we were having. This Maine-based company has been our only provider since its inception more than a decade ago. They have always been easy to reach and responsive. My call was handled in the same concerned and polite manner as usual. The representative listened to my story, made some suggestions of things I should try at home (which I had already done), and tweaked a few adjustments on his end.

From what he could see everything looked fine, and at that time it seemed to be. He ended the call asking me if there was anything else he could help me with and reminded me that their call line was open 24/7.

However, the problem continued to occur and I continued to call and continued to receive polite and apparently knowledgeable advice. Each of the six different technicians had a slightly different take on my story and made new suggestions, and I continued to do as they suggested. Finally, they sent a repair guy out to the house who installed a new wall jack and a filter that would cover the whole system. Things were running fine when he arrived and fine when he left, but by evening we were running too slow to do anything except receive very delayed emails.

The next morning, although our download speeds were back up, my patience had worn thin, and the very polite technician suggested that I wait until 8:30 when the level II people arrived. When I talked to "Bob," he listened to my story patiently, paused a second or two and asked, "Do you have a street light in front of your house?" I replied that we did, and it had been out for a couple of weeks. He said he had seen it happen a couple of dozen times, and was pretty sure it was the problem. Interference from a faulty starter was slowing our speeds during the dark hours. He was correct.

There are at least three lessons to be learned from this adventure that are applicable to the practice of medicine.

First, good customer service can help a physician maintain a relationship with his or her patient when things aren’t going well. I could have easily canceled my contract with this company and signed on with another, but because everyone had sounded so polite and interested in our problem, I continued to give them yet another chance.

Second and most importantly, while customer service is nice, there is no substitute for the correct diagnosis. Had my problem been medical, I would likely have been subjected to numerous needless studies and radiation exposures. The lost time and expense would have been significant, but even more troubling is that I could have died for the lack of the right answer.

Finally, and here is where the company failed, clearly they had at least one technician who had enough experience to arrive at the correct diagnosis. However, they had not created a system or fostered the environment in which this wisdom could easily be transmitted to the inexperienced. It seems to me that organized medicine also needs a better system to capture the wisdom of our level II fogies before they move on.

This column, "Letters From Maine," appears regularly in Pediatric News. Dr. Wilkoff practices general pediatrics in a multispecialty group practice in Brunswick, Maine. E-mail him at [email protected].

Like most of you, my wife and I have come to rely on the Internet as our primary link to the outside world. One evening, my wife complained that she couldn’t download one of the few television shows she watches on her laptop. I tried a few of the tricks I know, but failed and told her that it was probably Hulu’s problem and not ours. However, over the next week, slow download speeds continued to be a problem. But it was an intermittent condition and seemed to begin as the sun went down and didn’t occur during the daytime.

I called our Internet provider’s tech support line and described the issues we were having. This Maine-based company has been our only provider since its inception more than a decade ago. They have always been easy to reach and responsive. My call was handled in the same concerned and polite manner as usual. The representative listened to my story, made some suggestions of things I should try at home (which I had already done), and tweaked a few adjustments on his end.

From what he could see everything looked fine, and at that time it seemed to be. He ended the call asking me if there was anything else he could help me with and reminded me that their call line was open 24/7.

However, the problem continued to occur and I continued to call and continued to receive polite and apparently knowledgeable advice. Each of the six different technicians had a slightly different take on my story and made new suggestions, and I continued to do as they suggested. Finally, they sent a repair guy out to the house who installed a new wall jack and a filter that would cover the whole system. Things were running fine when he arrived and fine when he left, but by evening we were running too slow to do anything except receive very delayed emails.

The next morning, although our download speeds were back up, my patience had worn thin, and the very polite technician suggested that I wait until 8:30 when the level II people arrived. When I talked to "Bob," he listened to my story patiently, paused a second or two and asked, "Do you have a street light in front of your house?" I replied that we did, and it had been out for a couple of weeks. He said he had seen it happen a couple of dozen times, and was pretty sure it was the problem. Interference from a faulty starter was slowing our speeds during the dark hours. He was correct.

There are at least three lessons to be learned from this adventure that are applicable to the practice of medicine.

First, good customer service can help a physician maintain a relationship with his or her patient when things aren’t going well. I could have easily canceled my contract with this company and signed on with another, but because everyone had sounded so polite and interested in our problem, I continued to give them yet another chance.

Second and most importantly, while customer service is nice, there is no substitute for the correct diagnosis. Had my problem been medical, I would likely have been subjected to numerous needless studies and radiation exposures. The lost time and expense would have been significant, but even more troubling is that I could have died for the lack of the right answer.

Finally, and here is where the company failed, clearly they had at least one technician who had enough experience to arrive at the correct diagnosis. However, they had not created a system or fostered the environment in which this wisdom could easily be transmitted to the inexperienced. It seems to me that organized medicine also needs a better system to capture the wisdom of our level II fogies before they move on.

This column, "Letters From Maine," appears regularly in Pediatric News. Dr. Wilkoff practices general pediatrics in a multispecialty group practice in Brunswick, Maine. E-mail him at [email protected].

Like most of you, my wife and I have come to rely on the Internet as our primary link to the outside world. One evening, my wife complained that she couldn’t download one of the few television shows she watches on her laptop. I tried a few of the tricks I know, but failed and told her that it was probably Hulu’s problem and not ours. However, over the next week, slow download speeds continued to be a problem. But it was an intermittent condition and seemed to begin as the sun went down and didn’t occur during the daytime.

I called our Internet provider’s tech support line and described the issues we were having. This Maine-based company has been our only provider since its inception more than a decade ago. They have always been easy to reach and responsive. My call was handled in the same concerned and polite manner as usual. The representative listened to my story, made some suggestions of things I should try at home (which I had already done), and tweaked a few adjustments on his end.

From what he could see everything looked fine, and at that time it seemed to be. He ended the call asking me if there was anything else he could help me with and reminded me that their call line was open 24/7.

However, the problem continued to occur and I continued to call and continued to receive polite and apparently knowledgeable advice. Each of the six different technicians had a slightly different take on my story and made new suggestions, and I continued to do as they suggested. Finally, they sent a repair guy out to the house who installed a new wall jack and a filter that would cover the whole system. Things were running fine when he arrived and fine when he left, but by evening we were running too slow to do anything except receive very delayed emails.

The next morning, although our download speeds were back up, my patience had worn thin, and the very polite technician suggested that I wait until 8:30 when the level II people arrived. When I talked to "Bob," he listened to my story patiently, paused a second or two and asked, "Do you have a street light in front of your house?" I replied that we did, and it had been out for a couple of weeks. He said he had seen it happen a couple of dozen times, and was pretty sure it was the problem. Interference from a faulty starter was slowing our speeds during the dark hours. He was correct.

There are at least three lessons to be learned from this adventure that are applicable to the practice of medicine.

First, good customer service can help a physician maintain a relationship with his or her patient when things aren’t going well. I could have easily canceled my contract with this company and signed on with another, but because everyone had sounded so polite and interested in our problem, I continued to give them yet another chance.

Second and most importantly, while customer service is nice, there is no substitute for the correct diagnosis. Had my problem been medical, I would likely have been subjected to numerous needless studies and radiation exposures. The lost time and expense would have been significant, but even more troubling is that I could have died for the lack of the right answer.

Finally, and here is where the company failed, clearly they had at least one technician who had enough experience to arrive at the correct diagnosis. However, they had not created a system or fostered the environment in which this wisdom could easily be transmitted to the inexperienced. It seems to me that organized medicine also needs a better system to capture the wisdom of our level II fogies before they move on.

This column, "Letters From Maine," appears regularly in Pediatric News. Dr. Wilkoff practices general pediatrics in a multispecialty group practice in Brunswick, Maine. E-mail him at [email protected].