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36th Annual Convention Sessions, Keynote to Focus on Cultivating Customer Experience

By Adam Herman, OACB
Published Thursday, October 24, 2019 12:00 pm

Five years have passed since Ohio’s county boards of DD received a federal mandate to transition nearly all Medicaid-funded direct services to private providers. With that transition now complete or nearly complete in all but a handful of counties, many boards are starting to ask important questions about the future role they will play in the lives of the people and families they serve.
 
No longer able to rely on their former direct service programs’ legacy of goodwill, boards have two choices: commit to continuously improving and evolving customer service operations to meet the ever-changing needs and expectations of their growing and diversifying customer base, or maintain the status quo and risk being replaced as the most important force for positive change in the lives of the people with developmental disabilities they serve.
 
OACB believes the new, primary role of county boards as customer service (case management) organizations offers them more opportunities to support people with developmental disabilities than ever before.
  • Why do we do what we do? Is the true goal of our customer service (case management) function to meet needs of people and families, or is it to ensure that the proper boxes are checked and forms are submitted on time? (Hint: it’s the former.) Are we meeting that goal?
  • Do we know what our customers truly think of us, or do we assume their experiences are positive because we haven’t asked the right questions? What should we do once we learn their honest opinions?
  • How can we better understand the wants, needs, and expectations of the people and families we serve? What do we do with that knowledge?
  • How can we ensure customers’ expectations are met, even if the end result is not what they had hoped to achieve? Is our banked goodwill enough to keep them happy, or will their experience be shaped by a series of unproductive meetings, unanswered phone calls, and disappointing outcomes?

At this year’s Annual Convention, we hope to answer these and many more questions with a lineup of speakers that will challenge attendees to take a hard look at their current operations, identify what works (and what doesn’t), and build on our decades of success to ensure a brighter, healthier, more responsive future for the people and families we serve.

36th Annual Convention Information

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