Healthcare is a fast-growing and high-demand industry that nearly everyone depends on, usually at critical times. Yet it is ranked as one of the worst customer service providers, following TV and internet/wireless providers.

Whether it’s finding a doctor you trust, getting your prescription refilled, or finding a solution to your health emergency, the experience must be simple, smooth, and stress-free. With the growth of communication channels and customer demands, healthcare providers must innovate their old processes to accommodate the modern customer consistently across each channel.

The passing of the Affordable Care Act has changed customer expectations in the healthcare industry, a change that requires providers to shift from a primary focus on delivery business benefits towards servicing the needs of individual consumers. Healthcare providers must shift resources from transactional legacy systems towards customer-centric systems that remove the friction associated with a customer's experience, speed innovation, and drive growth.

In reality, customers have already made this shift. Carriers that remain static and continue with outdated systems are already suffering the negative business impact, and becoming increasingly disconnected from their customer. 

Healthcare providers must communicate on the channel of their customers’ choice.

With the growth of social and mobile, the number of customer service channels has rapidly increased over the last couple of years. To stay competitive, providers must increase the ease of service by adopting a multi-channel customer service approach.

It’s not about having a voice on all possible service channels, but instead having a consistent, quality voice on the primary channels that your customers use. Focus on the quality of multi-channel customer service, not quantity of service channels. Determine how your customers are choosing to interact with your brand in order to build your channel growth strategy based on customers’ demands and expectations. And, most importantly, ensure that the experience is consistent on the channels you have before attempting to add new ones.

Healthcare providers must develop social and mobile strategies.

Customers’ expectations are high, and their opinion can heavily influence a healthcare provider’s online brand, social voice, and expected response rate by customer service. Consumers are looking to find answers to their health-related questions quickly and easily. Contact Center Pipeline’s Multichannel Metrics survey found that 54 percent of Twitter users expect an answer within an hour. How are you going to fulfill this customer expectation?

Leading organizations are looking to streamline their customer interactions and communication channels into a single system, enabling all departments to have a single consistent view of the customer interaction, with all historical interactions at their fingertips.

A company's online experience, mobile presence, and social influence heavily influence patient satisfaction and retention. It was found that 90 percent of consumers trust medical information shared by others on their social networks. Ensure that your organization has the right social tools in place to gain full insight into a consumer’s online conversation, complaints, and reviews of case providers. 

Healthcare providers must provide a community for shared knowledge and support.

When someone is looking to resolve a problem, their first source is often an online search engine. With over 80 percent of consumers looking online for healthcare information coupled with a 50 percent growth in healthcare-related Google searches, if brands do not have a strong online presence, their growth strategy will suffer.

The voice of  consumers is louder than ever today, between their likelihood to post on social or review your brand on a third party site, consumers will create a reputation for your services, regardless of your knowledge or approval. 

Research found that 34 percent of consumers want self-service options to resolve their issues on their own. Consumers are looking to self-service options for a faster response or more immediate feedback. With the growth of service channels, many people are looking to forums, social platforms, and communities/portals to find answers, in effect moving away from the traditional channel of phone.

For many years, patients have accepted the traditional FAQ about the practice. But today's consumers expect more support. The traditional customer service marketplace calls this support Knowledge Management. Providing access to articles, links and recommendations for how to solve their issues—whether billing questions, managing insurance questions, or providing more traditional medical advice. 

So as healthcare organizations begin to rethink their approach to gaining and retaining patients, they must begin to realign their internal systems, social strategy, and online influence to suit the modern customer. This industry is in need of a transformation for organizations to become customer-centric.  

About the Author

Bob Furniss is the Director of the Customer Care Practice at Bluewolf, a Salesforce Global Strategic partner and a global business consulting firm that produces extraordinary customer moments to accelerate business outcomes. For more than 30 years Bob Furniss’ career has focused on helping companies improve customer experiences.  As the Director of Bluewolf’s Service Cloud practice, Bob leads a team of consultants focused on improving customer service and engagement.Follow him on Twitter @bobfurniss

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