Proactive private healthcare providers, insurers, and medtech firms in the UK are thinking about how to ease care experiences for their constituents. Yet this journey becomes all the more complicated as individuals move back and forth between private sector healthcare and the National Health Service (NHS).

These unique economic and social aspects of the UK-based system have huge impacts for healthcare leaders. At the core, though, is a responsibility to drive and support the digital experiences of patients, insured customers, and health consumers.

This starts by making sure consumers are aware of your product or service at the most relevant moment: their time of need.

Let’s explore three ideas that will help you build organisational traction and impact your constituents’ engagement with your brand.

Don’t let your customer or patient journeys gather dust

Chances are that your organisation has invested in a set of journey maps that detail how your constituent moves through your product or service. Given the increased complexities and new entrants in the UK market, it’s more important than ever to consider these top three ideas:

Tip #1: Reflect On Your Existing Personas and Journey Maps

Have you been honest about what’s changed since the last time your organisation completed interviews, personas, and journey maps? If you were to pick up the phone today and speak to your end consumer, would their feedback sound a lot different than it did the last time you gathered this input?

Even if you suspect that a market shift may only impact one key moment in the journey, that singular moment could make or break member satisfaction and other ROI metrics.

Ask yourself: “What has the ROI been on our strategic persona and journey map investments?” Then consider if and how your organisation uses the critical insights from those tools beyond the typical realm of marketing and digital experiences. Is that valuable information sitting in a folder somewhere gathering dust? If so, the next two tips are imperative for you.

Tip #2: Embed Journey Insights in C-suite Strategic Planning

Once that first tip is done and dusted, your organisation understands the voice of your constituent. That’s critical.

Now, it’s time to empower all senior leaders to support a healthy bottom line. Create a shared environment where new services, products, and experiences can be ideated.

You might use the following questions to guide these conversations:

Are there new entrants to the UK market competing with our organisation and making revenue less certain?
How does our constituent navigate care today?
How can we try to make their experience as frictionless as possible to attract and retain them?
How are we moving beyond the basics of retention and thinking more holistically about complete consumer delight (points of differentiation)?
Where should we focus to make the biggest impact?

Let the research help guide these conversations.

What’s in it for you?

A digital experience leader of any size organisation can often be seen as someone who is trying to push the constituent experience agenda on their own. You or your marketing leader may have created the personas and journey maps for a major strategic initiative, such as a website overhaul or the launch of a new product.

Ensuring the journey of your constituents is understood by the entire C-suite allows new shared ideas to be unlocked. This unified vision then smooths your path through organizational hurdles.

As you facilitate the conversation with your leadership, consider the following:

Ensure the mission, vision, values, and direction of the organisation align with patient needs and expectations, helping to create additional value
Prioritise innovation and organisational evolution based on patient needs and wants
Create a consumer-centric culture that permeates every level of the organisation, flowing down from the top
Aid in the selection of vendors and partnerships that will best support the patient experience
Develop new products and services that solve patient problems and add value
Ensure the consumer’s voice is loud and clear through product and service ideation and development
Identify areas of clinical importance to consumers, including trends –virtual visits, mental health, and wellness services, to name a few
Engage your sales leaders to anticipate and resolve objections, allowing them to better showcase value propositions that truly resonate

Tip #3: Align With Customer Service Leadership (It’ll Make Your Digital Agenda Easier!)

As any digital experience leader will confess, the moment their constituent chooses to make a phone call or engage with customer service via chat, it’s nearly out of their hands. However, you’re both accountable for constituent satisfaction.

Even the best digital journeys don’t mean total call deflection.

The best-branded experiences need to be seen and heard from all channels of engagement.

Benefits of journey maps for customer service teams

Customer service leadership should be very focused with you on digesting all the insights from personas and journeys to:

Ensure patients, caregivers, and families are met with an on-brand experience when they call for help
Increase understanding of patient problems, needs, and how to help; this is especially critical when a care team member’s demographic doesn’t match that of their customers
Enable feelings of connectedness and empathy to the consumer and the brand, providing loyalty-building experiences
Help your team members understand the impact of both planned and sudden life changes and how to best support patients during events

Journey maps can support an organisation in endless ways. As you jump into your next journey map project, consider how different departments can leverage those maps to better engage audiences and enhance your overall brand experience.

Partner with an Expert

Perficient’s digital healthcare strategists have partnered with the largest healthcare and medtech firms to help leaders align organisational business goals with constituents’ evolving expectations.

We can evaluate your current state, identify gaps, and make recommendations for a best-in-class, scalable digital ecosystem that enables your constituents to self-serve and quickly find what they need. We can then align technology to meet your organisation’s capabilities, reusing existing systems or platforms and pragmatically recommending new technology where it makes sense.

Contact us to learn more and get started today.