Awarded the best hospital in the Public Sector Customer Service Awards Competition in 2015, the Percy Junor Hospital (PJH) in north east Manchester, which celebrated 72 years of service on Wednesday, June 28, commemorated the milestone with a Customer Appreciation Day.

Senior Medical Officer of the facility, Dr. Carlos Wilson explained that the tradition of celebrating Customer Appreciation Day on the hospital’s anniversary is valued as the hospital places special emphasis on delivering effective service to both its internal and external customers.

“You have heard that the customer is always right but the concept is not that the customer is always right but that the approach in dealing with the customer, is that the customer is always right. So if someone is sick and they reach out to you at 6 a.m. in the morning and if you can help them and prevent them from death, you will be happy to do it. So when that phone rings and I see that it is a customer calling, I should be happy and that ladies and gentlemen represents the customer service that we should always strive to deliver” Dr. Wilson said.

Dr. Wilson added that the hospital has also embarked on improving customer service through its management team, in an effort to create an atmosphere which will allow internal customers to feel valued, which will impact the way they deliver service to external customers.

For Regional Director of the Southern Regional Health Authority, Mr. Michael Bent, customer service is essential to effective service delivery particularly in the health sector, and should always be improved.

“We need to put our customers first, not just our external but internal customers because without both we wouldn’t have an organization. We need both to coexist so that we can optimize our output. Percy Junor

Hospital continues to demonstrate the need for us to maintain and to build on what we have done. I recently looked at some of the formal complaints from facilities within the region and to date I haven’t gotten one complaint from the Percy Junor Hospital in terms of customer service for the last three to four years” Mr. Bent said.

The Regional Director pointed out that though the hospital has its areas of challenges, the team should continue improving its standard of customer service delivery. He encouraged the staff members to continuously raise its bar of service delivery higher.

Constructed in 1945, the Percy Junor Hospital has also received several public sector awards including Most Creative and Innovative Agency and Best Hospital in the past. As a Type C Hospital, it delivers service to residents in the parishes of Manchester, Clarendon, St. Ann and Trelawny.