Time To Read: 10 minutes
You may have had an opportunity to read through the Value Hearing content on our website.
If not I encourage you to do so. Our purpose is the empower you to engage and thrive through optimised hearing and a big part of this is to help educate and inform you about your options.
This philosophy means nothing if it isn’t also captured in the way the treat you as a client.
As such, it is important to me that the information captured on the website is not only my own, but is also shared by each and every member of our team.
Our audiologists receive special attention when it comes to the Value Hearing way of doing things. Sometimes professionals have some preconceived ideas of doing things based on previous experience, so they require a bit more focus to make sure your journey is consistent no matter which clinic you find yourself in or which clinician you are seeing.
Much of what you read below also applied to our non-clinical team as they have a critical role to play in your satisfaction.
Discover Value Hearing's Client Journey - it's one of the things which makes Value Hearing unique in the industry.
When we started, we did what everyone else seems to do: pick the best audiologist out of the small bunch. As long as they are qualified and not too abrasive, they’ll get the job done.
We have been lucky in some instances, but equally unlucky in others.
In time, we’ve learnt that it is better to wait for the perfect candidate, than to fill a position due to desperation. I’d rather fly out to a clinic to see the clients there myself and make sure the experience is a good one, than simply fill the position with the first suitable audiologist.
Over the years, our standing in the industry has improved dramatically. We now get multiple applicants for one position and the quality of the pool is much better than ever before.
We now also follow a rigorous multi-step interview process, ending in the ideal candidate or, if no one qualifies, we continue our search.
As a baseline, the candidate needs the right qualifications. We then focus on whether the candidate is a match to our company values and their attitudes towards continuous improvement and customer service. The decision on the final candidate is made by two managers, including myself.
We now assume that they know nothing about our processes and engage them in a comprehensive induction and training program.
They spend the first week familiarising them with our way of thinking and doing, and sit in during clinic to learn the ropes from me directly at our head office on the Gold Coast. We pay special attention to the processes unique to us, such as using your test performance on the speech in background chatter test, and how to match that to the right level of hearing aid.
This is supported by detailed documented clinical procedures and checklists to ensure our processes are followed carefully.
We allow the clinician to then to settle into their own clinic for a week, before having their manager sit in with them during another week, ensuring our processes are followed.
Supporting this initial training, our clinicians have regular one-on-one meetings with their manager to ensure any uncertainties or client satisfaction issues are addressed quickly. We also have regular clinician meetings where clinician issues, new concepts or products, articles or processes are discussed in a group setting.
Our audiologists also have access to a direct messaging channel for clinicians, where they can share findings or issues with the rest of the team, keeping everyone up to date with changes in process, new findings, or common issues and how to manage them.
Our audiologists also have access to our consistently updated process manuals to ensure they deliver the same standard of service to you, irrespective of who you see.
The also have a direct channel to me to help them with any technical or clinical concerns.
We regularly allow time for our audiologists to meet with hearing aid manufacturer representatives during their clinic day. This way they can receive updates on new developments and improve their skills with different products and the latest hearing aids. We also allow them time off to attend any big product launches and educational events to keep their skills and learning up to date.
We have a small in-house library from where staff can borrow books for self-improvement. The library covers topics such as audiology, business and marketing and personal development.
We even give our audiologists several educational leave days on top of their regular leave to attend any course or training that can improve them clinically. We even give them a significant financial allowance to pay for these courses. Our audiologists then share what they’ve learnt with their colleagues during clinical meetings.
Creating informative content is not only my responsibility. We are working to engage our entire team to contribute. This will help great a more diverse range of opinions, all aligned with our core values, to better guide, inform and empower you.
A big part of this approach is the employment of a content manager, who has a writing and journalism background. This will help us extract content from team members who aren’t necessarily comfortable with writing or appearing on video. This also means a greater quality and range of information that we were able to deliver before.
We do a regular survey of all our clients, from the start of their journey, through to years after they first got hearing aids. This helps us pick up any potential issues in our processes or the way the processes are followed. We can then fix the issue for you and also use the learning to better coach our team to deliver the best long term outcomes.
We are certainly in a better position in relation to our staff training and quality improvement than ever before. We are however by no means perfect. One of our values is continual improvement, so we are always looking for way to be better tomorrow that we are today.
With this in mind, we appreciate any feedback, positive or negative that can help us serve you better.
