March 4, 2009 – Customer ratings for GE Healthcare Devices Services, which provides service for telemetry, patient and holter monitors, in addition to cardiac stress, cardiology management and electrocardiograph systems, according to a 2008 IMV ServiceTrak and Q4 2008 MD Buyline reports.
Service for GE Healthcare’s electrocardiograph equipment held its first place ranking, in MD Buyline’s Q4 report, for the third consecutive quarter, while cardiac stress service maintained its top ranking for the second straight quarter. In addition, services for cardiology management and Holter Monitor held their second place ratings for the second consecutive quarter. A key result in the IMV ServiceTrak survey was GE Healthcare engineers' fastest-in-the-industry on-site service response time of 13.1 hours, and on-site service cycle time of 19.6 hours – 41 minutes faster than the industry average for the survey.
In both surveys, GE Healthcare recorded ratings' improvements in many critical service attributes over the preceding reports. In the IMV ServiceTrak report, GE Healthcare earned numerous ratings above the industry average.
Improved Q4 ratings for system performance and reliability, installation/implementation and applications training contributed to GE Healthcare’s number one ranking for cardiac stress equipment service. Electrocardiograph service held its number one rating by maintaining high overall scores in seven key attributes. Cardiology management, at 2nd place, continued to make more progress toward the top service rank with improvements in scores for system performance and reliability, applications training and overall composite score. Similarly, Holter monitor held onto its number two ranking and earned improved rankings in service response time and repair quality.
Patient and telemetry monitor service received improved scores in several attributes compared to the third quarter of 2008. In installation/implementation, applications training, service response time and overall composite marks, GE Healthcare’s patient monitor service earned higher ratings since the last report, and held steady in system performance, system reliability and service repair quality. For telemetry monitor service, customers rated system performance, installation/implementation and applications training higher in the latest quarter.
“We will continue to leverage customer feedback to improve our customers’ perception of service for monitoring solutions and diagnostic cardiology services," said Mike Battuello, GE Healthcare General Manager, Devices Services. "I think we’re still experiencing the impact that customer-driven initiatives have had on customer satisfaction. Better service facilities, more service personnel in the field and real-time updates to customers on product repair status are showing customers that we’re structuring our offerings around what they have told us they want and need. All of this is part of our goal to set a new benchmark in service and be the number one service provider for our customers.”
MD Buyline surveys rank vendors based on customer satisfaction scores of seven aspects of equipment service: system performance, system reliability, installation/implementation, applications training, service response time, service repair quality and overall composite score.
The 2008 IMV ServiceTrak report for the wide range of patient monitors divided customers into those who send their equipment to a depot for off-site service and those whose vendor performs the service on-site. Among the 372 total depot respondents, there were 68 GE Healthcare customers; among the 658 total on-site respondents, there were 106 GE customers.
The survey indicated that for the category of original equipment manufacturers (OEM) On-Site Service Response Time, GE engineers’ on-site arrival time of 13.1 hours is the fastest among the vendors included in the survey. In addition, GE Healthcare’s on-site service cycle time of 19.6 hours is 41 minutes faster than the industry average.
In the parameter of OEM Service Follow-up, both depot and on-site GE Healthcare customer groups rated service above the industry average, according to the survey. In addition, in the “Training – Sufficiency to Fix Equipment” and “System Performance Meets Expectations” questions, the on-site and depot customer groups rated GE Healthcare above the industry average. Eighty-one percent of the depot customers rated the “System Performance Meets Expectations” parameter as “very good” or “excellent.”
GE Healthcare on-site customers indicated that remote solving of problems was possible 77 percent of the time, compared to the industry average of 64 percent among the on-site customer groups of other vendors. The GE Healthcare Customer Repair Center (depot) customers responded “Yes” 11 percent of the time when asked if the manufacturer provided remote dial-in diagnostic support, which is above the industry average for all depot customer respondents.
GE Healthcare Customer Repair Center customers also gave higher than industry average scores for the Ability to Drive Industry Standards and the Probability of Repurchase, in addition to higher than industry average scores for all four attributes for Installation and Training: System Installation Process, Operating Manual Easy to Read and Understand, Training – Ability to Adapt to Users Needs, and (as previously noted) Training – Sufficiency to Fix Equipment. Seventy-six percent of respondents rated the ability of GE’s trainers to adapt to users’ needs as “very good” or “excellent.”
In the System Performance part of the survey, GE Healthcare Customer Repair Center customers rated service above the industry standard in four of the five attributes: System Performance Meets Expectations (as previously noted), Ability to Upgrade Technology, Reliability of Hardware and Reliability of Software.
In the OEM Depot Service Engineer Performance section, 85 percent of GE Healthcare depot customers rated the quality of GE’s Customer Repair Center service engineers as “very good” or “excellent.”
Regarding Help Desk Phone Support, GE Customer Repair Center respondents indicated that GE Healthcare provides a direct connect to telephone support 72 percent of the time, which is higher than the industry average. In addition, GE’s Customer Repair Center engineers’ initial phone response time of 1.8 hours is faster than the industry average.
For more information: www.gehealthcare.com
May 30, 2024 
