Physicians and healthcare workers are accustomed to offering supportive care to patients “bedside,” that is, in in-person interactions. However, customers today expect this same level of care and support regardless of where the interaction takes place—in-person, over the phone, virtually, or otherwise.

While healthcare providers recognize that digital transformation is necessary to strengthen customer experience and engagement, doing so can be complex.

According to a recent survey by Deloitte, 92% of surveyed healthcare leaders stated “better consumer satisfaction and engagement” as the primary desired outcomes from digital transformation. And indeed, improved digital experiences do lead to higher consumer satisfaction and engagement, as the data shows:

As customer behaviors and expectations change, speeding digital transformation is essential. However, it’s essential not to lose the human touch if organizations want to increase customer experience and engagement.

Instead, digital experiences should reflect the same level of care and support experienced in person. In addition, customers’ in-person experiences should be followed-up or supported with virtual or digital care. This could look like allowing patients to make a direct connection with their physician via virtual chat services, personalizing patient communications, hiring professional and personable agents for your call lines, and more.

Convenience plays a large role when it comes to customer experience and satisfaction, both within the healthcare industry and more broadly. According to research from PwC, convenience is one of the highest-ranked desires of patients when it comes to their healthcare experiences.

And the general data is even clearer:

While offering virtual care or telehealth appointments is one way to improve convenience for many consumers, that’s just one step. Consumers want a healthcare experience that includes:

• convenient hours and locations
• easy-to-book appointments
• the ability to get test results online without seeing a doctor
• getting appointments sooner
• online bill payments and registrations
• streamlined check-in processes
• 24/7 access to a healthcare provider

By focusing on how healthcare can be more convenient for customers’ busy lives, healthcare organizations can make major strides in improving customer experiences.

Transparency and privacy are two ends of the same spectrum—and both are essential for exceptional customer experiences in modern-day healthcare. In an interview with Deloitte, David Betts cited these as two of the biggest values for modern-day healthcare consumers:

People desire transparency, so they can clearly understand what is happening to them and why [and] they require security. Customers need to believe that everything they share with you will be safe and secure. They want to be confident that you have tight control over who accesses their most personal information.

Customers expect—and deserve—transparency throughout the healthcare process. But at the same time, there’s a high level of security and privacy needed for managing sensitive patient data.

As such, healthcare organizations must invest in finding a balance in this tension. For example, healthcare organizations should consider how they can expand transparency for consumers at various touchpoints of the healthcare journey:

• discussing procedures and treatment plans
• examining care options and lower-cost solutions
• evaluating and finding providers
• healthcare processes and communication standards

It might go without saying that improving customer support—including self-service options—can improve healthcare CX. However, recent data shows that excellent customer support in healthcare is still difficult to find.

Clearly, there’s a high desire from consumers for stronger customer support and improved self-service so that healthcare needs are easier to manage. As a result, healthcare providers who prioritize implementing and offering such improvements will stand out from their competitors.

In addition, research from PwC highlights that customers do, in fact, want stronger customer support from their healthcare experiences, with “quality support” ranking in the top five features health consumers most value. From assistance navigating the healthcare system to self-service tools and lower-cost care options to help resolve insurance claim issues, improving customer support is essential for health organizations that want to strengthen CX.

Personalization is clearly an important factor for CX in retail, automotive, and education—but what about healthcare?

According to recent research and customer surveys, it’s clear that customers expect personalization in healthcare settings just as much—if not more so—than in retail experiences.

In healthcare settings, each customer’s experience is unique and oftentimes a sensitive experience as well. As customers experience fear, anger, frustration, and other difficult emotions, personalized support can help customers feel at ease amidst unnerving situations.

For the consumer, personalized health care means being recognized as a unique individual with a unique health history and circumstances, receiving relevant content and a hassle-free experience, and achieving better health outcomes. For the organization, it means getting to know the consumer better; using those insights to tailor the channel, timing, and messaging; and developing curated products and solutions.

Boston Consulting Group

So, how can healthcare providers make the experience more personal?

• Chart your patients’ care journeys with personalized support and content
• Personalize messages to bring a human touch to automated reminders and follow-ups
• Integrate data to create more personalized experiences
• Segment customers to engage with them in more personalized ways
• Provide personalized recommendations for solutions and services based on patient preferences

There are so many ways to personalize the customer experience in healthcare, but the data is clear: personalization pays off.

Healthcare providers who implemented personalization saw the following gains:

According to the research, engaging with consumers in a personalized way not only improves customer experiences but also health outcomes. And, of course, better health outcomes improve customer experiences as well.

What many healthcare organizations may neglect as they attempt to improve personalization is the level of digital transformation necessary to pull it off. In order to personalize at scale, organizations need to increase data, improve segmentation, implement technological upgrades, reduce silos, and utilize machine learning and automation processes to understand and engage customers.

For many organizations, outsourcing can help speed up digital transformation and improve data-rich insights while relieving internal teams of the burden of strategizing and executing the change.

Alongside personalization, creating seamless experiences for consumers should be a top priority for organizations looking to improve CX in healthcare.

While there are many steps in a patient’s healthcare journey, their experience should be smooth and connected. From finding a doctor to creating an appointment, transferring medical records, showing up for their appointment, accessing test results, scheduling follow-up care, and so on, all of this should be seamless and effortless for the consumer.

Experts and practitioners both agree that simplifying and streamlining the patient journey is the first step.

A good experience begins with the patient flow, the ease of access, the scheduling, the communications,

Sue Shade

says Sue Schade, principal at a health IT advisory firm, in the Harvard Business Review.

This is where omnichannel solutions come into play. No matter how many steps it takes on the backend to organize and assemble customer data, the customer simply wants an effortless experience. In fact, 70% of consumers say they expect companies to collaborate behind the scenes on their behalf.

Omnichannel software and strategies can help you create this experience for customers—gathering all customer data and communication history in one place so that every agent has access to a customer’s entire journey and each interaction picks up exactly where the last one left off.

Omnichannel experiences also take into account the variety of channels customers use throughout their journey—from TV and print media to paid search, referrals, websites, phone calls, telemedicine, in-person visits, and more. With an omnichannel strategy, you can create a consistent experience across both digital and in-person channels with reduced silos and improved integration that cares for the customer at every step.

Aggregate and implement insights from customer data
The foundational element of many of these strategies, from personalization to increased convenience or seamless journeys, is data. Without customer data, most of this isn’t possible at scale. Unfortunately, data is often a major challenge for healthcare providers.

Health data is often segregated among many sources: healthcare providers, insurance companies, pharmacies, communities, and physicians all hold a piece of the puzzle. In order to make the most of this data, healthcare organizations need to implement increased data sharing among other stakeholders to get a more holistic picture of customer preferences and needs.

The good news about customer health data is that customer trust in health organizations to protect their data is actually quite high compared to other industries, with 34% of consumers saying they trust doctor’s offices to protect their data. While healthcare organizations need to be mindful of protecting and maintaining that trust, they should also feel empowered to use that data to improve customer experiences.

Healthcare organizations can use existing data, as well as newly gathered data, to create actionable insights. After all, you can’t know what customers want unless you have data to understand your customer. This goes beyond basic health data as well—healthcare organizations should understand customer preferences, lifestyles, behavior, priorities, demographics, and other data.

Once this data is aggregated, you can use it to segment customers for personalization (i.e., cost-conscious consumers vs. convenience-focused members), improve experiences, cater to consumer preferences, and so on.