Doctors and Social Networks

The last few years have been a roller coaster in my house with my wife and my little girl going through some pretty major health issues. That being said, I have had my fair share of interactions with all sorts of different doctors. I have seen at least two of just about any kind of doctor you can imagine at this point, GI specialists, Endocrinologists, Cardiologists, GP's, OB/GYN's and on and on.

Through the years I have had a front row seat to the callous, rude, un-engaged, arrogant and self centered attitudes of the majority of doctors that are in practice today. Medicine seems to be one of the last places where we seem to grin and just accept the unacceptable behavior of someone that we are paying for services. If it were any other service that we were paying for from a professional, we would not take the punishment that we do from doctors. And when I say punishment, I don't mean when they tell us things that we need to hear and yet don't want to hear. I mean mostly the way in which they go about doing their jobs from bedside manner to follow up to even the people that are representing them in the front office of the facility.

Of course their are now a number of websites that are posting info about doctors and helping us to get a better feel for the skill sets and relative success of doctors. But medicine still seems to not have felt the power of social media and social customers. I have a feeling that will be changing soon. Two days ago we went to see a new endocrinologist and felt that we had gotten the wrong info and wrong dosages for some medicine for my wife. After calling back and getting the front desk who tried to dismiss my request, I insisted on speaking with the doctor or at least his Physicians Assistant. The next whole day went by without any conversation or phone call back. My wife and I started chatting about this and talking about what we were going to do in the social world as a response to our poor experience. Using Twitter, Facebook, my blog and email to get the word out that this doctor was not someone that we would recommend.

So that begs the question, when will social media and social customers become in control of the doctor patient relationship and how will that affect the number of doctors that are in practice today? Will doctors have to change their philosophy on how they treat patients? Will doctors adjust to the social customer? If they don't, will they become obsolete?

Filters

I had a conversation with my wife the other day and it got me thinking about filters and technology. She was on her Facebook account, where she has something like 600 friends now and she was saying that it is getting to the point where it is almost not manageable anymore. She said that it is almost a full time job to just ensure that she gets to see the right information from the right person. I am not a Facebook user, so I don't know if there is some type of filtering system that allows people to only see the people they talk to most etc... But it got me thinking....

I have held the belief for some time now that communications technology is only as useful as it is personal. What do I mean by that? I mean, communication and the way in which we communicate most effectively is determined by the medium where we have the fewest unimportant or unwanted interruptions.

For me, everything started with a plain old telephone and answering the telephone was important because there was no such thing as an answering machine or voicemail. So, you really needed to answer the phone because someone really wanted to get a hold of you. There were few unwanted interruptions in that media from the likes of telemarketers so it was valuable.

Then came cell phones. When they first came out, I always answered my phone no matter who was calling. I knew that not many people had the number so when they called, I should for sure answer. I controlled tightly who had the number and it was illegal for any telemarketers or bill collectors to call that number. Then we all got cell phones in the US and so it wasn't so private or exclusive anymore. Everyone had your number and you had their's, but talking on the phone became less and less desirable.

Then email came. Same pattern as before. Then IM came, again same pattern as before. Then in the US, text messaging become a huge craze, 10 years after Europeans had been depending on SMS. But all of these have again become almost burdensome because of the volume of messages or the interruptions with information that we don't deem important.

So we end up back at the first paragraph of the blog. What about Facebook? Twitter? Foursquare? Yelp etc....

Are all of these communications platforms just the next new thing that will someday become more and more burdensome for people to keep up with? Or will they invent ways to stay relevant with their users by helping them find the information that is most important to them.

If they don't, they might find themselves in a heap next to the rotary phone in my basement.

Social Media Revisited

I wonder, will people someday start realizing that they didn't really want all that stuff they posted for the last few years in the public domain for all the world to see?

I was having a beer with a friend a few weeks back and we were talking about all the social outlets that are available to people today, both the more static versions like blogs and Facebook and the more dynamic like Twitter and Foursquare. His comment to me was that he doesn't have an account on Twitter or Facebook or anything else besides LinkedIn because he doesn't want to share all of his world with all of the world. He thinks that someday, people will look back at all the information that they have shared and they will regret sharing so much. They will either have issues that they need to confront of identity theft that are serious and require law enforcement attention. Or he said it might just be the something that could cause real embarrassment for a person or their family.

I know that there are already groups that exist that are trying to become you in the social world. They are linking to your friends, they are telling people that they know you and then before you know it, they are pretending to be you.

Smells like an nice opportunity for someone to help people ensure their identity.

The Phone is Ringing

I read a blog recently from a company that works in the world of social media metrics. What I found particularly fascinating about the post was the way in which they were approaching the concept of social metrics by creating an analogy to the world that all of us know so well, the call center.

The point of the post really was to highlight the fact that all of the conversations that are happening in the social world are like millions of people reaching out to contact your company, sales, service, marketing, and no one picking up the phone to talk to them.

As I have said before in my posts, deep community or social engagement may not be the best first place to start in the social world for some companies. Some companies might be best served by just first tightening up their processes for service and attacking their first contact resolution rates to ensure the customers that are contacting them are happy. Then maybe they can step into the world of social metrics tracking slowly by seeing it as another channel that they need to satisfy their customers in. Then comes the cool stuff where you start anticipating customers needs by what is happening in all your channels.

Whatever companies decide to do, remember that you don't need social metrics or tracking to just get it right for the customer the first time.