Inside Duke Medicine

Customer service: everyone’s responsibility

John Robinette has never forgotten the lessons he learned as the red-coated hospital customer care pro: smile, and always be quick to help. Photo by Bill Stagg

John Robinette, assistant director of the Private Diagnostic Clinic, knows all about the importance of helping patients find their way through Duke’s labyrinthine hallways. Not for nothing did he earn the nickname “Mayor of Duke Hospital.”

Speaking recently from his PDC office in the Erwin Square tower, from where he can look out on the sprawling Duke University Medical Center, Robinette reminisced about his work to improve the hospital experience for patient and physician alike.

That experience, he said, often starts right inside the front doors.

“This is a big and complicated place. We need to make every effort every day to make it as simple as possible for the people who we take care of – the patients and the families and the staff – to move through our system as efficiently and as safely as possible.”

In 1974, Robinette was the youngest administrator on the staff of William Anlyan, M.D., then dean of the School of Medicine and vice president for health affairs. After experiencing the exceptional hands-on customer service of an airline, Anlyan had returned to Duke and tapped Robinette to literally don a red coat and prowl the halls of Duke Hospital looking for ways to assist hospital visitors.

“I smiled a lot,” said Robinette, explaining his approach to the 12-hour days in the hospital hallways, helping lost patients, answering employee complaints and triaging the issues of the moment.

A year later, the red coat gave way to visitor information desks positioned at key entries. The color-coded hallways of the hospital, painted for easy recognition, were redecorated and labeled as numbered clinics and zoned areas, just like airport concourses with their ordered and easy-to-follow gates. The Marriott Corp. even came to campus to train managers in the best practices of hospitality industry customer service.

Now, DUMC is even bigger – Duke North was built in 1980, and DUH is making plans for more expansion.

That makes it even more important for employees to be on the lookout for visitors in need of a helping hand. Indeed, many Duke Medicine employees wear a reminder of this core value on their name badges – Service Begins With Me.

“Customer service is everyone’s responsibility — not just that of a guy in a red coat,” said Robinette, who still stops to help patients fumbling with their wrinkled paper directions.

Three years ago, it was him.

For the first time ever, Robinette was faced with a mortal threat to a close family member. “She may not make it,” he was told in the Emergency Department.

“I’d been here at Duke for 32 years, but the moment I got hit with that, I couldn’t find my way. ‘How do I get from here to there?’ – just POOF.”

Recounting the tale in the familiar confines of his office, his face reflected the panic of that moment.

“All of a sudden, I became someone else. I wasn’t the guy who knows where the sewer runs” – he really does know where the sewer runs. “All of a sudden I’m a guy with someone near death, and somebody’s helping me get from Point A to Point B. I was just totally overwhelmed.”

Robinette composed himself, and got to where he needed to go. But that lesson has stuck with him. “It certainly is different on the other side,” he said.