Next Generation Consumerization in Healthcare
Consumerization in Healthcare
There is a substantial shift in health “ownership” happening in the healthcare industry, driven both by consumers’ increasing interest in taking charge of their health and soaring healthcare costs. Consumers driving this shift have notably different expectations from those of healthcare companies. At the same time, the entire consumer healthcare audience continues to be influenced by their experiential interactions outside the healthcare space, which is driving demand for similarly-calibered experiences within healthcare.
All healthcare companies must focus on these critical changes. Many adopt CX practices such as personas in hopes of addressing the ever-evolving needs of their patients, customers, and employees. Unfortunately, most persona work does not address the ever-evolving expectations of patients, customers, or employees.
For healthcare companies to succeed in driving growth, they must enhance customer and patient experiences to better align with audience expectations. Next-generation experience strategies are the key to accomplishing this. These strategies start with understanding the common situations that patients and customers encounter and developing techniques that turn these situations into opportunities for both the company and the customer.
Understanding Situations
Almost all needs arise out of situations. This is especially true in healthcare. The situation is the ‘when’ of needs. When someone breaks their arm, they need a doctor. When someone contracts bronchitis, they may need an antibiotic. They don’t need the treatment before their illness or injury. They don’t need the treatment after they’ve recovered. It’s only during the time frame in which the need arises that the individual needs the solution.
The ‘situation’ also includes the context in which the need arises. If you break your leg while playing a team sport, there’s likely to be people around to help you. If you break your leg on a solo hike into the woods, well, that’s a very different context and probably a very dramatic turn of events. If a relatively healthy person starts to develop symptoms of bronchitis while on vacation, they might be able to wait until they get home to see their regular doctor, but if a person with severe asthma starts bronchitis symptoms on vacation, they may need immediate medical attention.
We use these extreme examples purposefully. They highlight a common myth about consumerization. Some have argued that needs arise from demographics, preferences, and attitudes. Ask yourself: is there a demographic for broken legs? For bronchitis? Do customer preferences matter much in broken leg situations? Can you segment customer attitudes when they have broken their leg or developed symptoms of bronchitis?
Why Most Personas Don’t Work
When a need arises, there is an opportunity to serve that need and create value for the customer and the company. Most persona work focuses on general attitudes, preferences, and demographics—not situational needs. They try to describe the ‘who’ of the customer rather than the more valuable ‘when’ and ‘how’ of the situation. Just like there is little to no value in the ‘who’ for broken legs, there is also little value for the customer from knowing their attitudes, preferences, and demographics. The primary value for the customer comes from understanding the situational needs and being able to respond.
Most CX professionals use personas to remind solution providers to be empathetic toward the customer. While this is a good thing, the personas, which often include the face of the ‘typical’ customer, may in fact create stereotypes about the people who are the actual customers or lead to generalized assumptions that prevent providers from recognizing the nuanced needs of individual patients/customers.
While empathy for the customer is necessary—especially in healthcare—it is not sufficient to create value. It’s an ingredient, not the main objective. Value is realized when empathy drives solutions that align directly with customer needs.
Create More Customer Value Through Situational Markets
When a healthcare provider understands and supports the patient’s needs in a way that recognizes their situation, then the experience is customized to them. It’s also important to recognize that situational customer needs extend beyond the physical aspects of the particular situation – i.e., location of treatment, type of illness or injury – and into the customer’s life system situational needs. The most important of these, given the current economic realities of US healthcare, is their healthcare financial situation.
For example, recommending a medication that is not covered by a patient’s insurance does not satisfy their health or financial situational needs if the patient is unwilling or unable to bear the cost burden themselves because they won’t proceed with the treatment. This is a challenging consideration set for clinicians who are already very time-strapped. Thus, it is incumbent on the organizations who develop solutions that are utilized by clinicians – anything from drugs to digital tools – to create them in such a way that it enables the clinician to more easily respond to situational needs. This can only be done when situational needs assessments are a core part of solution design.
Leveraging situations to drive experience development will help create greater value for providers and patients, enabling providers to treat with real empathy, make patients feel more cared about, and improve health outcomes. And ultimately these outcomes will deliver value for the company as well.
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Dave Norton, Ph.D. is the Founder and Principal of Stone Mantel, a research-led consultancy at the forefront of customer and employee experience strategy. With the support of lead experience strategists like Tiffany Mura, Health Practice Lead, they guide, research, and build frameworks to help companies across the healthcare industry, deliver on Time Well Spent for customers and employees. Learn more at https://www.stonemantel.co/.