Healthcare is one of the vital sectors in society, but not everyone appreciates its prevalence. In that light, a recent study depicts that at least 47% of healthcare consumers posit that healthcare and life sciences focus more on the field than the patients' needs (Gabriel et al., 2017). In other words, healthcare institutions focus more on the industry needs and less on customer needs, thus deemed not being customer-centric. Significant commercial giants such as Amazon, Apple, and Google have successfully implemented their consumer-centric business models, whereby healthcare institutions should learn from them (Gabriel et al., 2017). Therefore, it would be necessary to change from the traditional industry needs-centric towards customer-oriented organizations. Health care institutions should change their perception about their consumers that need to be wooed with flawless experiences. Considering the repercussions that could emanate from negative customer experience, especially on sales, healthcare practitioners should focus on excellent medical treatment and render a positive customer experience.
Proposed solution
Therefore, to address customer experience, it would be recommended for healthcare institutions to reinvent their business strategy to a more customer-centric business strategy. Most successful organizations are customer-experience businesses, which helps amplify customer loyalty and consumer satisfaction alongside the revenue due to increased business transactions. Therefore, healthcare institutions should suppress negative healthcare customer experiences from lousy customer service by administrative staff, time wastage, focus more on paperwork than patients, and substitute with constructive practices.
Therefore, changing the paradigm in the healthcare customer experience would significantly help resolve the issue. Improving customer experience would eventually amplify consumer engagement and strengthen the relationships that would constructively enhance the overall experience (Harkins, 2017). It results from consumer-friendly practices that encourage direct interaction between healthcare practitioners and the consumers and significantly address consumer needs. The aim is to understand the consumers' needs and provide personalized healthcare services that improve their relationships and the overall customer experience in the industry. Besides, when healthcare providers focus on the consumers' needs, consumers feel acknowledged; thus, they tend to be loyal and more satisfied with the institution. Increased consumer loyalty and satisfaction positively impact both the experiences and revenue for the organizations (Gabriel et al., 2017).
Organizational Resources
Therefore, various significant organizational resources would be vital to accomplish the change towards establishing consumer-centric practices. Human resources would be the significant resources that would contribute towards achieving the changes. Employees operate directly on the patients and other consumers as they interact personally, and the services provided are highly subjective. Therefore, it is required to adequately train healthcare employees to adopt customer perspectives in their practices to contribute towards achieving a customer-centric environment.
Besides, organizational technology would be required to streamline the journey towards achieving a customers’-centered environment. for instance, website analytics, centralized records system, telemedicine, internet of things, and other technical aspects of the institution would help achieve the changes. It is required for healthcare practitioners to effectively use the technological resources to identify customers' needs and efficiently serve the consumers. Significant focus on improving customer experience helps implement patient-friendly technologies.
Strategies to create a clear vision for stakeholders
Essentially, identifying strategies that create a clear vision for external and internal stakeholders regarding the changes would be vital in a healthcare environment. The strategies help build internal momentum for initiatives to establish significant customer experience, as articulated in the following section.
Defining aspirations
Healthcare institutions should clearly define their aspiration focused on customers' needs and how they could affect their business. The aspiration of changing towards customers' experience practices would translate into the overall mission and new culture. Therefore, healthcare management should strive to understand and address consumers' fundamental needs and wants to determine great experiences (Martin et al., 2016). To effectively define the aspirations, it is vital to engage the stakeholders in the process.
Understanding consumers and their journeys
The following strategy would be dissecting the customers' profiles, their needs and preferences, their motivations and their fundamental causes of satisfaction. Doing so would help design and implement a sophisticated program and convince the employees to acknowledge the objectives. The key focus here is to bring the customers' perspective into focus and help staff conform to a customer experience program and link with consumers more effectively (Hinchcliff et al., 2016).
Preparing employees
Achieving a customer-experience perspective in the healthcare environment would require aligning the central role of staff to deliver a compelling customer experience. Therefore, training the employees about the services, products, and effective customer service is necessary and should be highly embraced (Shea & Gresh, 2016).
Implementing change
The leadership should spearhead in addressing the issue and the solution where their employees follow suit. Frontline leaders play a pivotal role in establishing a common aspiration in an organization.
Stakeholders
Stakeholders whose expertise would create effective workgroups include internal stakeholders such as the Director of public health, Head of health intelligence and information, communications, public health strategists. Besides, external stakeholders such as patients, service users, suppliers, media, and customers.
Outcomes
Upon initiating the proposal, several outcomes would manifest. For instance, there would be more engagement among the stakeholders, and it results from their roles in ensuring that the organization achieves its aspirations. Besides, stakeholders would be coordinating to achieve a common change goal (Hinchcliff et al., 2016).
Also, redefined healthcare procedures and operations would ultimately lead to enhanced customer experience. It would result from personalized customer service, quality services, a deep understanding of the consumers, and effective relationships between practitioners and consumers. The combined efforts and perspectives would shape the effectiveness of the implementation of the customer experience strategy.
References
Gabriel, P., McManus, M., Rogers, K., & White, P. (2017). Outcome evidence for structured pediatric to adult health care transition interventions: a systematic review. The Journal of pediatrics, 188, 263-269.
Harkins, M. K. (2017). A. I HealthCare.
Hinchcliff, R., Greenfield, D., Hogden, A., Sarrami-Foroushani, P., Travaglia, J., & Braithwaite, J. (2016). Levers for change: an investigation of how accreditation programmes can promote consumer engagement in healthcare. International Journal for Quality in Health Care, 28(5), 561-565.
Martin, L. T., Plough, A., Carman, K. G., Leviton, L., Bogdan, O., & Miller, C. E. (2016). Strengthening integration of health services and systems. Health Affairs, 35(11), 1976-1981.
Shea, G. P., & Gresh, B. (2016). Healthcare in America: Try Thinking This Way-Part 2. Healthcare Transformation, 1(2), 120-137.
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