Transforming the Patient Experience to Drive Brand LoyaltyLaurie K. Baedke, FACHE, CMPEPresidentLIFEworks Healthcare Group, Inc.

Nebraska Optometric Association Fall Convention

September 23, 2011

Are you proud of the patient experience your medical group

provides?

Are you confident that your medical group is

the provider of choice in your community?

Does your medical group provide the experience you would want for your

family members or friends?

What is a brand?

.

Engaging the Patient

As a result of their various encounters with a brand, customers can become emotionally attached or “engaged”

with the brand, or – more worrisome – they can become “disengaged.”

Engaging the Patient

Customers have relationships with brands they use, and these relationships will ebb and flow over time based on how companies treat their customers.

Nurturing loyal customer relationships is critically important and has enormous financial consequences in tighter economic times.

Engaging the Patient

Patient relationships can be lasting, but often they aren’t. In part, this is because there are an increasing number of competing options, all equally attractive (or, at times, equally unattractive). Multiple medical groups with similar qualifications, locations, technology, etc.

This all results in “me-too” marketing with “me-too” brand promises.

Engaging the Patient

Similarity doesn’t produce patient engagement.

Similarity produces commodities.

Engaging the Patient

How prevalent is engagement among U.S. consumers? How bonded are U.S. customers to the brands they use?

In a recent Gallup study, of more than 3,000 customers across six product and service categories, about one in five (21%) is “fully engaged” with the brands they use.

Engaging the Patient

Even more are “actively disengaged”. More than one in four (28%) are actively disengaged with the brands they use and own.

“Actively disengaged” means that these individuals feel no sense of loyalty, exhibit no discernable pride in association with the brand, they have little trust in the brand or how it treats it’s customers. And, they view the brand as replaceable.

Engaging the Patient

26% of individuals who purchased a new car in the past four years were “actively disengaged” with the brand they own.

Active disengagement among buyers of domestic U.S. autos is about twice as high (30%) as among buyers of imports (16%).

A staggering 43% of past-year domestic flyers evidence active disengagement with the airline they fly most often.

Dollars for Disengagement

One hotel chain that Gallup recently studied discovered that half (just under 49%) of their allegedly “loyal” customers were in fact disengaged. These customers, it turns out, behaved quite differently than the chain’s engaged customers.

The share of business that actively disengaged customers gave to the chain was only about half (48%) of the share that the hotel’s fully engaged customers returned to the chain.

Disengagement cost this hotel money – about $700 per customer per year.

Dollars for Disengagement

Similar evidence was found in studies of financial institutions.

At one bank, disengaged customers had deposits and assets that were 21% lower than those fully engaged customers – a difference of just over $8,000 per customer.

Add that up over the almost 600,000 actively disengaged customers, and that’s an enormous wasted opportunity.

Dollars for Disengagement

How does your medical group stack up?

How many actively disengaged patients do you have?

How many fully engaged and loyal patients do you have?

What is your opportunity cost for allowing | tolerating disengagement?

Achieving Engagement

Enduring relationships between a company and a consumer have four prerequisites:

1.Confidence2. Integrity3.Pride4.Passion

These four aspects of the relationship must be reinforced wherever, whenever, and however companies touch their customers.

Achieving Engagement

Whereas the core tenet of real estate is LOCATION – LOCATION –

LOCATION,

The four Ps of marketing are:PRODUCTPLACEPRICEPROMOTION

Achieving Engagement

However, those four Ps merely represent the tip of the relationship building iceberg. The most important element of patient loyalty, one that leads to long and referral filled futures, is:

PEOPLE

Achieving Engagement

The #1 reason to get customer service right in healthcare is:

• It’s better for the patient• It’s better for the family• It’s better quality care• It’s better for the medical staff• It’s better for market share• It’s better for risk management• It’s better for reimbursement• It’s better for patient safety

Achieving Engagement

The #1 reason to get customer service right in healthcare is:

It makes the job easier!!!

A Team vs. B Team

Are there days when you come to work and see the people you are working with and think to yourself, “Bring it on! Whatever we’ve got to do today, this team of people can make it happen!!”

A Team vs. B Team

A Team Members:Positive Team player

Proactive TrustworthyConfident TeacherCompetent Does

whatever it takesCompassionateHas a sense of

humorCommunicator

A Team vs. B Team

Are there days when you come to work and see the people you are working with and think to yourself, “Shoot me, shoot me, shoot me! I can’t work with this person – I worked with them yesterday!! Who in the world makes the schedule around here?”

A Team vs. B Team

B Team Members:Negative Administrator

ScroogeReactive Constant

complainerConfused Can’t doAlways surprised Poor communicatorLazy Nurse RatchedLate Dr. Torquemada

A Team vs. B Team

How many B team members does it take to destroy an entire day?

A Team vs. B Team

The fundamental problem with B team members is not that their behaviors create patient dissatisfaction (although they clearly and predictably do), but that their actions and attitudes are systematically demoralizing the good work provided by the remainder of the team.

If for no other reason, eliminating B team behaviors is essential to ensuring that employee satisfaction and morale can be maintained at the highest possible level under the admittedly difficult circumstances faced in medical groups today.

A Team vs. B Team

A team behaviors = good customer service = high employee satisfaction = positive patient experience

B team behaviors = bad customer service = low employee satisfaction = negative patient experience

Case Study

Programming Positive Patient Experience

• Mission • Hire right• Environment• Structure workload• Cultivate relationships• Provide information• Set expectations• Service recovery• Celebrate successes

Goals

Goal #1 – To make the job easier (the real reason to focus on service excellence).

Goal #2 – To transform the patient experience and drive brand loyalty.

Goal #3 – To help you and your staff realize anew that you are engaged in one of the world’s most honored professions – giving care and comfort to those who entrust their life and health to us.

The Star Thrower

Questions | Comments

Laurie K. Baedke, FACHE, CMPEPresidentLIFEworks Healthcare Group, Inc.1150 Westridge DriveBlair, NE 68008402.680.3311baedke@elifeworks.com www.lauriebaedke.com/blog