The Importance of Creating the Best Possible Patient/Customer Experience. Understanding retail healthcare customers

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1 The Importance of Creating the Best Possible Patient/Customer Experience Understanding your Creating the Best Possible Customer Experience Part I retail healthcareyour customers Understanding retail healthcare customers

2 The customer experience is a journey The most important aspect is understanding that the retail experience is not limited to a single transaction. It s the culmination of many transactions, many experiences and many customer interactions, and your organization needs to work hard to make every one of these moments matter. When you think about a journey, several things come to mind. There s a destination, there are places along the way, and there are unexpected events as well. The retail consumer experience is the same. From the very first touchpoint, customers in a retail environment embark on a journey that you have created for them and there are many destinations along the way. Doubtless, there are unexpected experiences in the customer journey, but even negative experiences can work to your organization s benefit and enhance your customer s journey in the long term. Ultimately, when you share in the journey with your customers, your organization benefits from building a bigger, more loyal customer base as visiting patients are converted to enthusiastic brand ambassadors for your organization.

3 Experiences can set you apart Your clinical capabilities and delivery may be better than your competitors, but are you delivering what customers really want most from healthcare providers? Attention. The importance of making your patients feel special can t be overestimated. They want to know that you genuinely care and that they matter to you. Most patients can't accurately assess your employees skills as medical practitioners, but they can certainly assess their experience. It's the attention and care you give them while they're in your clinic that's most important in a retail context. Consider the experience that you create for them. Are your waiting rooms packed? Are patients immediately placed on hold when they call? Do your greeters address patients by their names? Are they cold and clinical or welcoming and friendly? Tweaking even these aspects of your customer experience can lead to greater customer loyalty down the road.

4 Pleased to meet you Getting to know your customers is essential for building a good retail model for your organization, and there s no better place to start than with surveys. Customer surveys are the building blocks for creating better customer service. Retail-driven industries from banking to hotels have learned to capture customer feedback in both digital and traditional channels to strengthen their value propositions. What s more, they do it often. Virtually any and every transaction presents an opportunity to gain customer feedback and insights. With a proactive customer engagement program in place, you can begin to measure customer perceptions of your organization and begin to develop your customer profiles. Engage with Consumers Via Their Preferred Channel Use a multi-channel approach to reach patients by their preferred mode of communication; create interactive messages to get real-time patient responses; and customize messages to improve the service experience. Open up forums for customer feedback, and you'll attract consumers who make choices based on patient reviews. Downloadable Documents Blogs and Patient Forums Access to Relevant Information Online Scheduling Appointments Ordering Prescriptions Phone Messaging and Consultation Delivery by Mail Messaging Mobile/Text Messaging

5 Pleased to meet you (continued from previous page) Getting more tactical, surveys are an excellent and cost-effective way to begin your customer engagement efforts. Whether you choose to deliver them via paper or online, they are easy to administer. You can choose from: Online surveys Kiosk surveys Mobile surveys Paper surveys mailed or distributed by hand in-clinic One important consideration is that your respondents need to feel comfortable providing information. For healthcare providers this is a bit more problematic than in other industries, especially considering the sensitivity of patients in regard to disclosing their medical information and mandatory HIPPA requirements. So as you develop your surveys or any component of your organization s customer engagement strategy for that matter you ll need to pay close attention to your messaging development, how you present your organization, and your transparency in regard to the information you receive. Because, ultimately, willingness to share leads to willingness to recommend. Patients willing to share good experiences in the healthcare provider industry: 54 % vs 70 % Consumers who share good experiences in retail. 1

6 Building the customer profile So now you ve done your due diligence, you ve deployed your survey and gathered endless sets of data about your customers. Way to go! Now it s time to fill in the picture and begin developing your customer profiles. Developing customer profiles and refining them over time helps you understand their needs and wants, as well as their buying behavior, interests, attitudes and a multitude of other criteria. As a healthcare provider, your customer profiles could be segmented by zip code, frequency of visits, patients with chronic conditions, patients who come by referral, walk-in patients, primary care patients, etc. Initially, it does take a little work to build the profiles. However, once you get your program in place, it is quite easy to update and maintain your database. As you analyze your data and your customer profiles (or personas) become clearer, you ll be able to refine and personalize your relationship with them by determining what to communicate, when to communicate it and by what method. What s more, you ll have the tools (i.e., the data) you need to build a target list of potential customers and present them with the products, services, offers or information that are most relevant to them. As you continue to track their service utilization, interests and attitudes, you can take the big leap to predictive modeling, where you can anticipate behavior related to health and stay ahead of trends in your market. And in the process, you ll be functioning like a true retail enterprise. Regardless of short- or long-term marketing goals, building your customer profiles is a continuous process. Customer behaviors and perceptions are constantly evolving, so if you want to develop true and actionable data from them, you can t afford to abandon the process after several cycles.

7 Identify key influencers High deductible health plans and provider comparison tools are empowering consumers to think more critically about where and if they receive care. To succeed in the new customer-driven environment, healthcare providers need to reevaluate the key influencers that drive patients to their doors. While the traditional clinical drivers, from pediatric urgent care to sports-related injuries, will always be in play, the ideal experience is increasingly being defined by non-clinical elements such as convenience, speed of service and friendliness. Moreover, there is an entirely new set of drives that need to be considered for attracting and retaining customers: Customer experience Cost sensitivity Convenience Value Reputation Most people don t make their retail decisions in isolation. They are inspired, informed and assured by others throughout the path to purchase. 74 % of consumers identify word of mouth as a key influencer in their purchasing decision 2 and 77 % of patients use Internet search engines prior to booking appointments 3 Key influencers for retail healthcare in the Internet environment Online reviews Third party experts Friends and family recommendations Healthcare articles and news Health and wellness websites

8 Take a good look in the mirror Adapting to a customer-centric retail model doesn t happen overnight, and it s not going to come without a deep assessment of your organization. You ll need to make the effort to be honest about your organization and its processes. You ll need to identify and isolate what you re doing right to enhance the customer experience and what you re doing wrong. This internal learning process sets the foundation for developing your core position, what you stand for as an organization and ultimately what you want your patients to believe about you. What consumer activities or decisions inform your organization? How do you respond to them? Who, if anyone, in your organization is rating or incentivizing patient satisfaction? These are the kinds of questions you need to be asking yourself and your key decision makers in order to work toward creating a better customer experience from the inside out. Once you ve obtained the strengths, weaknesses and customer perceptions of your organization, you ll have the foundation to begin looking outward. You can begin conducting competitive analyses within your market. You can also begin developing your brand positioning within the market and value propositions that counter your competition. Positioning is foundational in how you execute a true retail healthcare communication strategy, and it will bring into play all that you ve learned about your customers, the customer experience and your organization itself. Steps you can take to enhance the customer experience Conduct internal evaluation surveys Establish a patient experience champion Launch a continuous 360-degree feedback program Take customer feedback seriously Develop processes for responding to inbound, outbound and internal communications Set up collaborative meetings with employees to discuss customer experience issues Establish an employee rewards program based on positive customer experiences

9 About Heinrich Heinrich is a leading healthcare agency focused on elevating healthcare brands and embracing change in today s marketplace. We help providers and payers achieve industry-best results with our extensive experience across the spectrum of healthcare consumers. Contact: George Eddy, President, at georgeeddy@heinrich.com Citations: 1 PwC 2011 Experience Radar Research: Experience Radar 2011: Insights for the US retail industry: 2 Think with Google study: When the path to purchase becomes the path to purpose. Written by Cenk Bulbul, Netta Gross, Steven Shin and Jeremy Katz. Published June 2014: