Exceptional Consumer Experience Is Defining the New Era of Healthcare — Here’s How to Embrace It.
| © 2022 Freed Associates, Inc. 2 The Time to Get On Board with Consumer-Experience-Driven Healthcare Was Yesterday. In the past decade, nearly every industry went through massive, technology-driven shake-ups and organizational transformations to meet consumer needs. The healthcare industry has lagged behind, which has left consumers frustrated and clamoring for better experiences. Disruptive players from retail and other industries, powerhouse health plans, and providers began to answer the call. Today, organizations that aren’t fully embracing a consumer-first approach to healthcare are rapidly falling behind. Consumers have more choices than ever on how, where, and from whom they receive care. And the COVID-19 pandemic has amplified expectations for an improved and different healthcare experience even further.
| © 2022 Freed Associates, Inc. 4 Disruptive Players Are a Major Threat to the Conventional Delivery of Healthcare Services. Traditional healthcare organizations are not known for being agile, flexible, or fast when it comes to implementing change. This represents a tremendous opportunity for players that are: Seasoned pros at listening to the needs of consumers and finding the right opportunities to improve experiences Adept at discovering where needs are not being met and moving quickly to fill gaps Disciplined at honing the processes, tools, and frameworks needed to rapidly implement change Healthcare organizations that want to compete with these new forces, grow their business, and remain relevant must shift from a traditional, linear focus on operational improvement and evolve to address the kaleidoscope of human needs.
5 Where Do You Begin? A full-fledged commitment to meeting consumer needs is a complex endeavor with many potential points of failure. So, what’s the answer? It starts with crafting a consumer experience vision and consistently keeping the consumer at the center of the work. LEARN MORE Never Stop Assessing and Adapting Get Clear on Governance and Accountability Design and Implement Create Your Consumer Experience Vision Identify and Choose Your Opportunities Carefully
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7 Create Your Consumer Experience Vision. KnowWhere YouWant to Go. Your consumer experience vision gives everyone in your organization a clear view of the future. This process should intentionally be aspirational and serve as a rallying point for executives to champion and work toward. To be successful, you must strive for complete buy-in from leadership, providers, and staff, with the goal of using your vision to guide everyday actions. Some considerations in creating your consumer experience vision include: Meaningful consumer insights must serve as the basis of your work It should be easy to understand and communicate It should be relevant to all consumer segments It should be unique to your organization With your vision in place, identify your strategy and approach for getting the work done. Start by determining what data and research will be needed, how executive buy-in will be achieved, what tools and methodologies will be used, and how change management will be woven into the fabric of the work. Make sure that you use the voice of your consumer to anchor every decision. And continually return to your vision statement to ensure that your work is not losing focus on meeting consumer needs. Next comes the hard part. Making it real. LEARN MORE
| © 2022 Freed Associates, Inc. 8 Avoid the SqueakyWheel. Consumer experience improvement opportunities can sometimes surface through “interesting” avenues (a call to the CEO, a specific consumer complaint, team members with strong personalities and very particular opinions). Don’t let a squeaky wheel influence where you focus your efforts. Improvement opportunities should be surfaced through data analysis and consumer research that provides an objective lay of the land. Identify and Choose Your Opportunities Carefully. © 2022 Freed Associates, Inc.
9 One of the main reasons that consumer experience initiatives fail is that leaders believe they already have the data they need to guide decisions. Input from patients or members, along with input from family members, caregivers, providers, and the staff that will actually implement change, is critical to your success. PRO TIP: Learn fromExisting Data. Analyze existing data through the lens of the consumer to identify improvement opportunities. Some examples of operational and consumer experience-based data to consider include: Operational data (e.g., scheduling times, wait times, billing cycle times, etc.) Call center data (e.g., type of call, type of patient or member, by geography, hold times, etc.) CAHPS scores Net promoter score (NPS) Audit results Complaints and grievances Patient and member satisfaction survey data Enrollment and retention data Digital tool usage (e.g., average response time, average resolution time, website analytics, etc.) Be aware that these types of data alone do not tell the full story. A deeper understanding of consumer needs through consumer research is required.
| © 2022 Freed Associates, Inc. 10 Consumer research is not a one-and-done activity. Successful change implementation requires follow-up research and measurement to ensure that consumer experiences have improved as intended. This research also determines if consumer needs have shifted due to environmental changes. Without these “check back” points with consumers, your improvement efforts can move off course. PRO TIP: Make Consumer Insights the Star of the Show. Direct input from consumers is critical to understanding specific and personal needs. Reaching out to patients and members for input on their experiences may be more difficult than relying on organizational data, but it is essential to implementing meaningful change. There are many methods for engaging consumers to gain input, including focus groups, surveys, field studies, interviews, and direct observation. This type of research can be managed internally or by an external research organization that has expertise in sourcing consumers, consumer segmentation, consumer research methods, and results interpretation. It’s not uncommon for healthcare organizations to outsource this very specialized type of work. Paired with analysis of organizational data, consumer research provides a fact-based starting point for evaluating and prioritizing consumer improvement opportunities, and keeps consumer needs at center stage. LEARN MORE © 2022 Freed Associates, Inc.
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| © 2022 Freed Associates, Inc. 12 Don’t Let Governance Be a Roadblock to GettingWork Done. How you build and manage your governance structure can make or break the success of your consumer experience improvement efforts. Any significant elevation of consumer experiences requires executive leaders to be at the helm in terms of guiding change. The responsibilities of these leaders must be clearly defined and communicated. And key stakeholders across relevant operational areas and functions of the organization must take their cues from this leadership team. Multiple levels of governance are often required in this type of complex work, with a top level that includes key executives with decision-making rights and an additional governing body (or bodies) with accountability for overseeing the progress of the work. It is equally critical to provide clarity to project teams on where and how they can make decisions. Get Clear on Governance and Accountability.
13 One of the first critical responsibilities of the governance team(s) is the development of goals and success measures. The use of objectives and key results (OKRs) is an effective framework for measuring success. The collaboration and alignment between governance and project teams with the OKR process is a natural fit for consumer experience work, where the work is most successful using a “test and learn” iterative process. Below are key questions to consider in establishing your governance structure and processes: 1. Are key executives aligned on the vision? 2. Which key executive leaders will have the most influence over this work? 3. What buy-in do you need organizationally and how do you get it? 4. Is there a VP of consumer experience that will lead this work? How will this individual engage with and influence other leaders in the organization? 5. How will the executives leading the consumer digital strategy and initiatives be engaged in governance? 6. How will change management be led and managed? 7. How will opportunities be prioritized? 8. How will goals or objectives be established? Will OKRs be used? 9. What measurement processes will be used? 10. What type of flexible funding processes can be used to support a “test and learn” approach to the work? LEARN MORE
| © 2022 Freed Associates, Inc. 14 Many organizations fail because they become more invested in developing capabilities than achieving outcomes. This is particularly true when a team focuses more on launching a technical capability than incorporating real-time consumer feedback. Organizations that get “test and learn” right must be willing to scrap, modify, and continually evolve capabilities. PRO TIP: Test. Learn. Repeat. The backbone for design and implementation of consumer experience improvement work is the utilization of a “test and learn” process. Successful organizations focus on testing and prototyping quickly, then incorporating consumer feedback with the goal of discarding bad ideas before they seek funding or go too far in implementing a solution that’s not effective. This type of ongoing engagement with consumers can be overwhelming, but don’t get discouraged. Consumer research experts can help with this critical component of design and implementation. Design and Implement. © 2022 Freed Associates, Inc. ADDITIONAL INSIGHTS. Three Key Lessons for Digital Health Care from the Consumer and Service Industries.
15 Use Design Tools Specific to Consumer ExperienceWork. The following standard consumer experience design tools are helpful for surfacing consumer needs and assessing the organizational impact of meeting those needs. Journey map: A journey map uses storytelling, through the use of personas and visuals, to describe the relationship a consumer has with an organization. The story is told from the consumer’s viewpoint and is intended to identify consumer needs and pain points. Service blueprint: A service blueprint uses a journey map as the basis for describing the operational and organizational activities that support the consumer. It is most valuable when multiple departments are working toward creating a consistent consumer experience. While many organizations have started to build internal teams to drive this type of design work, recognize when you need to pull in experts. As part of implementation, communicate to consumers the actions that you have taken. You’ll build trust and loyalty by showing them you’re acting on their feedback.
| © 2022 Freed Associates, Inc. 16 Think About Program Management Differently. Your ProgramManagement Office (PMO) is most likely used to managing status and financials with a heavy governing hand. Adhering to “test and learn” requires the PMO to let go and empower project teams to take an adaptive approach. The PMO must be aligned with delivering on a desired consumer experience and be focused on removing constraints, coordinating across project teams, and continuously shifting available funding and resources to the highest value work. This is not an easy change for a traditional PMO. It requires an abundance of support for frequent changes driven by continuous consumer feedback. Start Change Management Early. A shift to addressing consumer needs and adopting a culture of learning presents fundamentally different ways of doing business for healthcare organizations. Don’t underestimate the amount of communication and support that executives, providers, and staff will need to embrace this change in thinking and the ways that they work. Change management often requires a project team to successfully move an organization forward. There are many change management frameworks and models that can help you build a foundation for success when it comes to this type of complex work, including Kotter, ADKAR, and Switch. Most frameworks and models include the core steps of conducting pre-work, managing resistance, developing the change plan, and implementing and monitoring the change.
17 Some examples of common change management tools include: Change management strategy Change management plan Change management leadership kick-off event Consumer impact analysis Stakeholder analysis Organizational culture assessment Change readiness surveys before, during, and after the change Your change management strategy and plan should have the goal of building the voice of the consumer into your organization’s DNA. Messaging should focus on why your organization is doing this work and how changes will improve the consumer experience. This messaging should be communicated at the very beginning of the work and continually be reinforced to ensure that the change sticks. ADDITIONAL INSIGHTS. Eight Steps for Healthcare Change Management Success.
| © 2022 Freed Associates, Inc. 18 Without a Culture of Learning, Your Efforts Will Be Undone. The golden thread that should be woven throughout any improvement journey is continual evolution. The number one reason that consumer experience efforts fizzle and fail is lack of follow-up. The needs of consumers change. Technology changes. Society changes. Companies that are truly consumer-centric never stop listening, evaluating and improving. If you embrace a culture that is focused on continually measuring, learning and adjusting, you will be well positioned to grow your business and remain relevant in the healthcare market. Need Help? Ask the Experts at Freed Associates. Improving consumer experiences often requires time frommarketing and consumer research groups, operational experts, data analysts, IT groups, and expert consultants. If you need help at any stage of your consumer experience efforts, contact us to learn how Freed can assist your organization in growing and remaining competitive by exceeding customer needs. Never Stop Assessing and Adapting.
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