Customer Experience Management Applied to Healthcare- Part 7

Or, the dangers of only viewing the customer-patient experience management as only the patient encounter.

An Intuit survey, "Healthcare consumers want online control"- HealthcareFinanceNews.com, March 3, 2011, indicates overwhelming support by the general public for more control over their healthcare via online activities. They want healthcare providers including physicians, to be accessible online. They want to pay their bills online, communicate with the provider, request appointments and get lab results. A clearly demonstrated experience need and expectation of consumers, that except for a few isolated healthcare organizations, is generally lacking among healthcare providers.

Had you been conducting market research on your customers-patients in the experience management process outside of the patient interaction, you would have understood that expectation and need. But unfortunately, most customer-patient experience management programs in healthcare providers are focused on the 1/3rd of the encounter with you as a patient.

Where do you go from here?

Healthcare providers do "dumb things" all the time. And they never seem to learn from that experience. So what happens when test results aren't available, the bill is wrong and a person cannot get the information they want or is on hold for too long? Well, all the compensatory goodwill built up in the patient encounter is lost because of these little "dumb mistakes" that healthcare providers make day-in and day-out. Those mistakes continue to build until they become non-compensatory event. Meaning that all the good encountered in the patient experience is washed away like a flood.

That's why its important to view Customer-Patient Experience Management(CEM or PEM) in its totality and not as an one service or clinical line experience. It may be for you, but to the healthcare customer-patient who views your organization across numerous touch-points and aggregates all of it into one overall experience, it's not.

Use the Internet and social media to frame the experience and meet customer-patient expectations.

Online bill payment, searching for information, communications via email, chats, facebook, twitter, YouTube and other mediums is an everyday occurrence for healthcare consumer. You, as a healthcare provider, need to understand that expectation and experience and integrate it into your efforts.

Part of the process of experience management is actively managing customers-patients experiences to meet expectations and change their experiences to drive revenue and market share improvements. It's not all about the patient satisfaction numbers. CEM or PEM has a definable and measurable financial outcomes. But you cannot achieve those revenue outcomes if you are not looking at experience management in its totality.

You may not want patient portals, but your customers do. You may not want online bill payment but your customers do. You may not want to have people schedule appointments online, but your customers do. You may not want them to have access to their medical information online, but your customers do.

By not fully understanding your customer-patient in their totality, you are not successfully managing their experience or expectations.

The wave is here to use an oft quoted metaphor. Its consumer-directed not provider-directed healthcare. And the sooner you get on the surfboard of true CEM or PEM, and start looking at the customer experience in its totality, the better the chances of your survival in the coming years.

The public, health plans, employers and government are running out of patience with healthcare providers and the "dumb mistakes" that continue to be made due to the lack of understanding of their needs, expectations and experiences.

Change or be swept away.

You can continue the conversation with me on:
LinkedIn: http://www.linkedin.com/in/krivich0707
Twitter: http://www.twitter.com/mkrivich

Michael Krivich is a senior healthcare marketing executive and internationally followed healthcare marketing blogger read daily in over 20 countries around the world. A Fellow, American College of Healthcare Executives as well as a Professional Certified Marketer, American Marketing Association, he can be reached at michael@themichaeljgroup.com or 815-293-147. Areas of expertise include: brand management; strategic marketing; sales and marketing integration; physician marketing; product launch; start-up launch and revenue growth; tactical market planning; customer experience management; rebuilding and revitalizing marketing operations; media relations; and service line revitalizations. Mike is Huthwaite SPIN selling trained and a Miller Heiman Strategic Selling alumni.

>>> Customer Experience Management Applied to Healthcare- Part 7 >>>

Customer Experience Management Applied to Healthcare- Part 6

So why are you not talking to your customers-patients in experience management?

As I look across the changing healthcare landscape, there is a movement gaining momentum to improve the patient and customer experience. Case studies and published articles are appearing in healthcare on Customer Experience Management (CEM). And don't get me wrong, wonderful improvements are being made. But when I delve into these improvement activities, one common denominator is missing and it concerns me.

If you are engaged in the CEM process correctly, that means you are talking to and listening to your customers or patients. Healthcare providers, such as MD Anderson as well as others, are actively pursuing customer and patient engagement that includes an intense and focused effort to actively talk and listen to their customers and patients. But unfortunately, they are far and few between.

Are you using only one means of gathering customer or patient experience intelligence?

There is no doubt that customer-patient satisfaction is an important outcome and can indicate where there are problems in the experience process. An excellent place to start to ask the question why, using the various tools of six sigma etc., to start the improvement process. Improvements are being made and satisfaction as measured by the various tools used improves, indicating success. No question about it and well documented.

But you are still not talking and listening to your customer-patients?

And I really don't understand why that is occurring.

Customer Experience Management requires that you actively engage in multiple ways to talk and listen to your customers-patients. Using one tool to accomplish that misses the point and you are losing valuable customer feedback. If you are not using multiple methods quantitatively and qualitatively to talk and listen to your customers-patients, you are not doing true Customer or Patient Experience Management.

Could it be potentially that healthcare leadership is by nature imperialistic?

Healthcare imperialism is an attitude derived from years of making decisions without customer or patient feedback. Because of training or knowledge, perceived status or being a not-for-profit whose espoused vision is focused on the community, healthcare providers can be imperialistic in their thinking that they know all or see all. The customer-patient can't possibly understand what we are doing. It's too technically complicated, or they don't have the knowledge and training that we do. We can no longer afford to think that way, and individuals seeking our care will no longer accept an imperialistic attitude.

Maybe it's because we are afraid of the answers we might get?

Asking your customers-patients about their experiences, needs and desires can be a scary proposition. Even so, as we move inextricably to a consumer-driven healthcare model and less of a healthcare provider-dominated model, talking and listening carefully are skills that need to be developed.

Take a step back.

Evaluate why you're afraid to talk to your customers and make those internal changes that will allow you to seek out open and honest feedback beyond satisfaction. Customer or Patient Experience Management is not easy and there are no shortcuts. Experience Management forces you, if done correctly, to potentially face some uncomfortable truths about your healthcare organization. It will also give you those shinning moments of organizational success to build upon.

To survive you need to get the process of Customer or Patient Experience Management right the first time. Hospital volumes and admission are down and are not coming back to previous levels of utilization. People are finding high-quality, low-cost, well known established brand options to traditional healthcare providers to receive care. Once those purchase patterns are established they are very difficult to break.

Time to start asking the questions you never really wanted an answer too. And listening to those answers.

You can continue the conversation with me on:
LinkedIn: http://www.linkedin.com/in/krivich0707
Twitter: http://www.twitter.com/mkrivich

Michael Krivich is a senior healthcare marketing executive and internationally followed healthcare marketing blogger read daily in over 20 countries around the world. A Fellow, American College of Healthcare Executives as well as a Professional Certified Marketer, American Marketing Association, he can be reached at michael@themichaeljgroup.com or 815-293-147. Areas of expertise include: brand management; strategic marketing; sales and marketing integration; physician marketing; product launch; start-up launch and revenue growth; tactical market planning; customer experience management; rebuilding and revitalizing marketing operations; media relations; and service line revitalizations. Mike is Huthwaite SPIN selling trained and a Miller Heiman Strategic Selling alumni.

>>> Customer Experience Management Applied to Healthcare- Part 6 >>>

Making Your Customers, Patients, Staff, Volunteers and Suppliers Heroes

With the rapid evolution of healthcare from a provider-dominated and directed industry, to a consumer- driven industry is forcing changes in how we market and do business. Being responsive, delivering an exceptional and consistent customer experience from first contact through evaluation to use and post purchase, meeting individual expectations and needs is never easy. But as many successful healthcare companies will attest, these are no longer nice to have business requirements, but got to have requirements in order to survive.

Treating patients is at the heart of all that you do. Doesn't matter if it's a hospital, long-term care facility, medical device manufacturer, pharmaceutical manufacturer or physician. In one way or another we are seen sometimes as heroes, other times as negligent fools and most of the time as just okay along the treatment path by our consumers.

So why then don't we make our customers, who become patients, staff, volunteers and others our heroes?

In healthcare, especially the hospital segment of the total industry, everyone is undifferentiated. Same medical services, same equipment, same doctors across multiple hospitals, same insurance plans, rooms, beds, gift shop. Little brand or brand promise differentiation.

If you are engaged in a Customer Experience Management process across the whole organization, by listening, learning, changing and adapting your business model, as well as the way you are delivering healthcare services to your customers and patients, then you are making heroes.

Why not tell your audiences who your heroes are?

The patient who extols your virtues. The doctor who admits patients nowhere else. The staff member that provides exceptional care and service day-in and day-out. The volunteer delivering papers each day to patients for the past 30 years. The supplier, medical device manufacturer, and others who because of their innovation make it possible for you to be in the position of delivering what we all hope is quality care.

Let's face it, healthcare on a day-to-day basis is mundane.

Making the mundane seem exceptional is what separates the truly successful from the also-ran. You can use these examples to frame the experience of your organization. Set the expectation that what you do is extraordinary. Medical care is mundane on a day-to-day basis. But it's the customer and patient experience and how we portray that experience to our audiences that will differentiate.

This marketing approach lends itself to developing effective campaigns to be deployed over time. It allows you to personalize and strengthen your brand. It also takes you beyond the we do this, this, and this, with this, that and these medical devices by putting a face on the outcome of care.

And in the end, isn't that what we are all about?

You can continue the conversation with me on:
LinkedIn: http://www.linkedin.com/in/krivich0707
Twitter: http://www.twitter.com/mkrivich

Michael Krivich is a senior healthcare marketing executive and internationally followed healthcare marketing blogger read daily in over 20 countries around the world. A Fellow, American College of Healthcare Executives as well as a Professional Certified Marketer, American Marketing Association, he can be reached at michael@themichaeljgroup.com or 815-293-147. Areas of expertise include: brand management; strategic marketing; sales and marketing integration; physician marketing; product launch; start-up launch and revenue growth; tactical market planning; customer experience management; rebuilding and revitalizing marketing operations; media relations; and service line revitalizations. Mike is Huthwaite SPIN selling trained and a Miller Heiman Strategic Selling alumni.

>>> Making Your Customers, Patients, Staff, Volunteers and Suppliers Heroes >>>

Healthcare Advertising in a Consumer-Driven Market

I have been thinking about this topic for awhile now. And it does fit into what I have been writing about in Customer Experience Management. Hospital and other healthcare leadership seem to be struggling with the concept of an empowered, informed healthcare consumer who is making active decisions regarding treatment and care, instead of relying on the provider of care making the decisions.

This is leading to any number of hospitals and others advertising outcomes, satisfaction rates, awards for care, no wait ERs and other self proclaimed measures and for example, using web site clocks that provide real-time ER wait times, etc. Some innovative hospitals have even been cleaver in their ER advertising and other communication channels allowing customers to text a message and get the wait time back. Some ads make claims of being the number one in treatment because of the volume of cases. Some support the brand and brand promise very clearly. Others leave much to be desired.

Most ads are agency quality and well done, while some are clearly created in-house and look it too.

Some no doubt are driven by what CEOs and docs want.

My advice to those hospital CEOs and docs is- don't quit the day job. Hire an agency and get it right. In a consumer-driven market home-grown is not cute. Too many headlines confuse people. Bolding copy is like shouting at them. Too much copy means you have no clear idea of what you are communicating. Those ads are not supporting your brand, brand promise or even at times make any sense at all.

Misrepresentation of the data.

But what I am also seeing is misuse and misrepresentation of data related to quality awards from third parties. It's one thing to advertise that you have earned awards for clinical quality in several areas, who the awarding organization is and the importance of the meaning of that award to your audience.


It's an entirely different matter when you take that award and tell people that if all the hospitals in the nation were as good as you, in those categories, which are not all of the categories of care awarded, that 158,000 lives would be saved annually is flat out wrong and misrepresenting any relative value of what that awards means.


And Tax-exempt hospitals chide their for-profit counterparts for misleading advertising?


Did you tell your audience that you had to pay the awarding organization for the right to advertise those awards?

What you should be communicating.

Which is the experience and how that awards makes you a quality provider of care in that category not all categories. Your messaging and visuals should be reinforcing quality, educating about what that award means , strengthening your brand and brand promise, as well as differentiating you from your competitors. You should be the data and outcomes transparent provider in your community. Create trust and goodwill with your messaging. Listen to your consumers and give them the meaningful data that they want in order to participate in the decision making process.

What you should not be communicating.

Do not use "unique", "world- class", "one-of-a-kind" , or "state-of-the-art" in your copy. What you do is not "unique", others provide the same. Unless someone is coming from another corner of the world to get care, you are not "world-class". And "state-of-the-art" is fleeting because a new service, procedure or technology is already on the horizon. Do not write or say "our medical team" or "staff" and use physicians in that sentence. Nor should you say "our physicians". That will get you drawn into physician malpractice lawsuits under the apparent agency doctrine.

Telling people "you care", when that is already an existing expectation of your consumers is stating the obvious. If anything, those types of messages only raise a red flag to consumers and are seen a pejorative.

This a critical component of Customer Experience Management.

In most cases your advertisements and other channel communications are the primary contact that a consumer has with you that starts the customer experience process or even considering changing providers. Talk to your audiences in meaningful ways. Educate. Teach. Inform. Change opinion. Tell them why the quality award is important and what it means to them. Frame their expectation and experience. Manage it.

Frame it in terms of the customer experience and you will find a heightened sense of consumer and brand awareness. Data transparency in outcomes and honesty will drive volume and revenue for that category of service. It won't if you incorrectly position the achievement by making wild claims of superiority that no one believes.

In the end, the FTC is watching.

You can continue the conversation with me on:
LinkedIn: http://www.linkedin.com/in/krivich0707
Twitter: http://www.twitter.com/mkrivich

Michael Krivich is a senior healthcare marketing executive and internationally followed healthcare marketing blogger read daily in over 20 countries around the world. A Fellow, American College of Healthcare Executives as well as a Professional Certified Marketer, American Marketing Association, he can be reached at michael@themichaeljgroup.com or 815-293-147. Areas of expertise include: brand management; strategic marketing; sales and marketing integration; physician marketing; product launch; start-up launch and revenue growth; tactical market planning; customer experience management; rebuilding and revitalizing marketing operations; integration of sales and marketing team; media relations; and service line revitalizations. Mike is Huthwaite SPIN selling trained and a Miller Heiman Strategic Selling alumni.

>>> Healthcare Advertising in a Consumer-Driven Market >>>

7 Keys to Marketing ACOs and Keeping Your Patients

With the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act (PPACA), impetus was created to drive providers to create Accountable Care Organizations (ACOs). Interesting in that the ACO model was left open. That is, patients can move outside of their ACO home for service and care. Unlike Health Maintenance Organizations (HMOs) where care was restricted to in-network providers, planners were afraid of the backlash that would occur if they created a closed-model HMO style, ACO model for Medicare beneficiaries. Studies suggest that up to 1/4 of beneficiaries enrolled in ACOs would not stay within the ACO network and would need incentives to do so.

That is a big out-of-network churn rate and too expensive to the ACO.

So what is a healthcare provider to do?

1. Make sure that you have a Customer Experience Management Program place. You need to be close to your members by understanding their current needs and how their needs change over time. This is consumer-directed healthcare not provider-directed healthcare. If you don't meet the experience needs of your consumers, then they will go out-of-network or leave all together. This means listening too, instead of talking at, your customers. It means constantly monitoring that state of the experience.

2. Invest heavily in customer service training. "The Patient", aka customer, is not here to serve you, you are there to serve them. You can never have enough customer service training. A well developed, and implemented customer service program will contribute in significant ways to keeping patients in your ACO. Exacting customer service standards for employee behavior with measurable and reviewed individual performance goals and objectives, are the only way to ensure that exceptionally high levels of customer service are deliver across the entire organization. What gets measured gets done.

3. Brand is everything. A highly developed brand, brand promise and brand promise execution in the organization is essential. Promotional materials, patient education materials etc., need to be of high value, provide useful and usable information, as well as reflect the experience that you want patients, caregivers and customers to have when interacting with your ACO. Your key message must be consistent across all materials. Your employees need to be trained to be brand ambassadors.

4. Define and market the customer experience around quality and outcomes. People will be buying based on price and quality. Since more of a financial outlay will be coming from individuals, they will care about the price they are paying in the way of insurance, co-pays or deductibles. If the patient does not believe that they are receiving exceptional quality and service for the price paid, that will become a large motivator for going out-of-network or changing ACOs all together. You need to be the transparent organization in price, value and quality.

5. Create incentives to use you and not go out-of-network. That may mean lower copayments and premiums. It may mean loyalty programs with no wait services. Online registrations for care etc.

6. Communicate in a variety of ways the value and benefit to the consumer for using you. Educate them to understand why you are better than the next ACO down the street. Don't assume anything. Differentiate!

7. Make access seamless and easy to use. One ACO to the customer/patient, one customer/patient to the ACO.

You can continue the conversation with me on:
LinkedIn: http://www.linkedin.com/in/krivich0707
Twitter: http://www.twitter.com/mkrivich


Michael Krivich is a senior healthcare marketing executive and internationally followed healthcare marketing blogger read daily in over 20 countries around the world. A Fellow, American College of Healthcare Executives as well as a Professional Certified Marketer, American Marketing Association, he can be reached at michael@themichaeljgroup.com or 815-293-1471 for hiring as your senior marketing executive , for interim assignments in all aspects of healthcare marketing whether it be strategic or tactical market planning, customer experience management, rebuilding and revitalizing your existing marketing operation, integration of sales and marketing teams, media relations or service line revitalizations. Huthwaite SPIN selling trained and a Miller Heiman Strategic Selling alumni, both highly respected and successful international sales training organizations, I can lead your organization though the challenge of integrating sales and marketing.

>>> 7 Keys to Marketing ACOs and Keeping Your Patients >>>

Customer Experience Management Applied to Healthcare Part 5- An Organizational Way of Life

For several weeks now, I have been blogging about Customer Experience Management Applied to Healthcare. The reaction and comments have been most interesting from around the world. Many have come from physicians, CEOs of hospitals, Consultants, Directors, Managers, line-staff and coordinators. The countries of origin for the comments include not only the United States, but Belgium, England, France, China, Russia and India to name a few. Several have asked for the materials offered up to help them internally to start or move forward their companies CEM process.

Some major observations that can be drawn from the comments and discussions.

First, is that leadership across many healthcare industry channels are struggling with the transition of the healthcare marketplace from a provider-dominated, decision-making enterprise, to a consumer-directed, consumer-controlled healthcare system. The consumer has slowly and most assuredly been taking a more active role in healthcare treatment decision-making for a long time now. An empowered consumer is a blessing and a threat to the way business has been done in the past.

Second, many healthcare organizations don't talk to their consumers, be it doctors, community, patients, families, employers, employees, insurance companies, etc. I mean really talk to them and engage in a meaningful conversation. A meaningful conversation regarding their experiences, needs, hopes, desires and expectations. And that is a very different conversation than the one in the hallway or in a patient satisfaction survey.

The third major conclusion is that there is need to accelerate and embrace new ways of doing things that are successful in other industries. That is not to say that new and innovative ways or understanding customers and changing organizations to more fully meet their expectations should be taken lock, stock, and barrel without critical examination and thought. We need to gain an understanding and the knowledge that comes from successful application of innovative techniques in other service industries. Identify what works, adapt, implement, evaluate and evolve. We no longer have the luxury of waiting 5, 10, even 15 years to adapt lessons form other industiures.

Fourth, we have difficulty using the word customer. It is as if that word has some kind of negative connotation because it is used in the for-profit world. It's okay to say customer and only use the word patient part of the time. In the beginning of these blogs I wrote that an individual is only a patient 1/3rd of the time in their experience in an organization. The other 2/3rds of the time, they are a consumer. Yes the 1/3rd of the time is the most critical of the experience chain, but the other 2/3rds of the experience can change the positive work done in 1/3rd of the experience.

CEM is about making lasting and ongoing changes for the purpose of growing the brand, increasing volume, growing profitable revenue and strengthening loyalty.

Customer Experience Management or for those that feel using the term Patient Experience Management is better, is not the "be all - end all" system. What CEM offers is a roadmap that can be used to change your organization to become customer-focused dedicated to meeting their needs and experiences. It is not just satisfaction results but it is part of the process. It is not just consumer market research, but that is part of the process. It is not just about hiring the right staff, that is part of the process. It is all of this and then some.

Customer Experience Management, when done correctly, is a major game changer for organizations. The application of CEM increases brand loyalty, volume, revenue and repeat utilization. CEM creates customer and employee evangelists. CEM takes you to a new level of organizational awareness and performance. One that is industry leading and game changing. CEM applies to all of your customers no matter how you segment or what you call them.

Never has healthcare been more challenging or frightening as we look to an uncertain future with the velocity of directional change. Never has healthcare been more full of opportunity to redefine its business, relationships to consumers and change the scope, cost and outcome of care. An exciting time for innovation, new models and breaking from the past.

To quote Charles Dickens- " It was the best of times, it was the worst of times,... it was the age of wisdom, it was the age of foolishness, ....it was the spring of hope, it was the winter of despair,...in short, the period was so much like the present."

Thanks for reading and see you next week.

You can continue the conversation with me on:
LinkedIn: http://www.linkedin.com/in/krivich0707
Twitter: http://www.twitter.com/mkrivich

Michael Krivich is a senior healthcare marketing executive and internationally followed healthcare marketing blogger read daily in over 20 countries around the world. A Fellow, American College of Healthcare Executives as well as a Professional Certified Marketer, American Marketing Association, he can be reached at michael@themichaeljgroup.com or 815-293-1471 for hiring as your senior marketing executive , for interim assignments in all aspects of healthcare marketing whether it be strategic or tactical market planning, customer experience management, rebuilding and revitalizing your existing marketing operation, integration of sales and marketing teams, media relations or service line revitalizations. Huthwaite SPIN selling trained and a Miller Heiman Strategic Selling alumni, both highly respected and successful international sales training organizations, I can lead your organization though the challenge of integrating sales and marketing.

>>> Customer Experience Management Applied to Healthcare Part 5- An Organizational Way of Life >>>

Customer Experience Management Applied to Healthcare- Part 4 The Process

CMS has proposed that 30 percent of a healthcare providers quality incentive payment be based on patient experience. Using the HCAHPS patient satisfaction data as the experience measure, hospitals, associations, satisfaction vendors have generally come out opposed for a variety of reasons, some valid, some just nonsense.

This is where Customer Experience Management (CEM)applied to healthcare comes in. However, and let me be clear about this, CEM is more than just looking at your patient satisfaction scores. Satisfaction data can be important in pointing out areas of needed experience improvement, but it is just one data source.

What you really need to do is talk to your customers.

That's right, talk to your customers with one caveat.

Do not talk to your customers until you have analyzed your satisfaction data. If you haven't analyzed your satisfaction data please see my book How to Use Patient Satisfaction Data to Improve Healthcare Quality. Do not talk to your customers until you have started the experience map process tool that identifies all the touch-points along a continuum where consumers first begin to experience you, then as patients, then as consumers again. Below is an example of a total Patient Experience Map for a hospital.

Along the top of the map are chevrons from the initial touch-point of relationship initiation to ending at loyalty. There can be as many or as few as you want. I would recommend that you be all inclusive and see your customer relationship across the entire spectrum. That is how your customer forms an experience of you. Their encounter with you is not just as an isolated event. It is the sum of all that occurs in their experience process. You will be working on individual service aspects to improve the experience, but you must always remember that changes in one area impact another and vies versa. Nothing is isolated from the whole in CEM. This Experience Map should be adapted for individual product or service lines,

Gaining a detailed understanding of the drivers of your satisfaction experience and connecting them to the organizational touch-points, will yield some initial insights into your customers. Brainstorm organizationally what the data means based on the experience map. Brainstorm what you think about the experience. Develop a detailed list of quantitative information that you need from your customers so that you can begin the customer-centric dialogue to understand their view of the experience.

These insights then need to be validated by your customers.

Market research is required.

If you are not going to listen to your customers about their experiences first-hand, then you are not engaged in CEM. Customers include employees as well. Small focus groups, one-on-one research, web enabled survey, telephone and other methods of research are needed to validate your experience assumptions. Don't be afraid to ask former patients about your current process for whatever service experience you pick. What did they understand? What did they not understand? Where were they confused? What would make it better?

This type of process can yield volumes of results. You can expect to have some of your insights validated. You will also be surprised at insights that you will gain from a customer-centric dialogue, uncovering areas for experience improvement that you never would have thought of or considered. Validation and identification assist in prioritizing what changes you need to make for the "ideal experience". With this type of data, you now are able to prioritize those experience changes that are "nice to have", compared to those experience changes that will make the most impact in experience improvement for rational resource allocation. It takes the guess work out of the equation. Cost benefit analysis is required.

It will take 2-3 months at a cost estimate of $30,000 for the research part for each service.

Now it's about operations.

Data drives decisions and knowing what will improve your customer experience based on your dialogue and validation by your customers, you can now develop those operational service improvement plans to improve the customer experience across the totality of that experience. How you allocate resources and change operationally is left to you within whatever process and or quality improvement system you use.

These steps need to be repeated for each service experience or product-line that you choose to improve.

Customer Experience Management is a way of life, not a one-time organizational change.

If you are interested, I have a small 14 slide PowerPoint presentation overview that summarizes Customer Experience Management Applied to Healthcare in an Adobe file format that I can send to you for educating your organization. Just send an email to me at michael@themichaeljgroup.com

You can continue the conversation with me on:

LinkedIn: http://www.linkedin.com/in/krivich0707
Twitter: http://www.twitter.com/mkrivich


Michael Krivich is a senior healthcare marketing executive and internationally followed healthcare marketing blogger read daily in over 20 countries around the world. A Fellow, American College of Healthcare Executives as well as a Professional Certified Marketer, American Marketing Association, he can be reached at michael@themichaeljgroup.com or 815-293-1471 for hiring as your senior marketing executive , for interim assignments in all aspects of healthcare marketing whether it be strategic or tactical market planning, customer experience management, rebuilding and revitalizing your existing marketing operation, integration of sales and marketing teams, media relations or service line revitalizations. Huthwaite SPIN selling trained and a Miller Heiman Strategic Selling alumni, both highly respected and successful international sales training organizations, I can lead your organization though the challenge of integrating sales and marketing.

>>> Customer Experience Management Applied to Healthcare- Part 4 The Process >>>