The Semmelweis effect is the tendency (a cognitive bias) to reject new evidence that contradicts an established paradigm.
It is named after Ignaz Semmelweis who, in 1847, discovered that child mortality rates could be significantly reduced if doctors simply disinfected their hands (rather than just wash with soap and water as was the practice at the time).
Semmelweis’s peers roundly, and quite viciously, criticised his findings as unscientific (this was before germ theory was accepted in the late 1800’s) and Semmelweis ultimately suffered a serious mental breakdown and was committed to an insane asylum where he died in 1865.
What does all this have to do with customer service? Watch the video below and see if you can spot the Semmelweis effect in action…
Now I don’t know Kevin Hedley personally but from his presentation he seems like a successful, intelligent, and articulate guy and I apologize if he went on to discuss this in greater detail than is shown in the video…
Kevin reveals his significant findings: (1) 40% of health club members don’t consider personalized interactions an important part of their health club experience, and (2) 64% of health club members considered that their membership consultant took a real interest in making them feel comfortable in their first few weeks as a new member.
He then goes on to draw this conclusion… the results show the importance of continued customer service by the membership team and consistent, positive members interaction from all staff.
It seems that (like most consultants) whatever the data showed he was going to come to the same conclusion… we need to improve our customer service (i.e. rejecting evidence that contradicts an established paradigm).
The real significance of this data, to me, is if 40% of health club members don’t consider personalized interactions an important part of their health club experience we need to be able to identify them so we can commit our, very limited, resources to the 60% of our members that do consider it important.
This is the basis of my previous post on customer service triage.
In my assessment these 40% are most likely to be more advanced health club members who are basically in control of, and have taken responsibility for, their own health club experience and therefore don’t require input from health club staff. Of course, more advanced members are interacting with their peers in the health club and because they basically know what they are doing are not reliant on health club staff.
However, in my experience, more advanced health club members naturally attract more than their fair share of attention from health club staff because of their regular attendance, quasi-celebrity status, and generally higher levels of comfort in the club. Basically they are easier to interact with and so they get interacted with more… a critical, yet common, misallocation of resources that can contribute to new member attrition.
The point is this... if we are going to take the time, and invest the resources, to enquire into our member’s health club experience we owe it to them, and ourselves, to use those findings more intelligently than to form a conclusion that simply supports the status quo… and not the available evidence.
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