Customer Voices | A Multigenerational Approach

Did you hear that? Customer experience in healthcare is influencing business practices, solutions, and even products that are introduced to the market. However, social determinants of health (SDOH) factors are often overlooked when developing business plans which can impact generational healthcare experiences. This series won’t separate defined generations (Silent, Boomers, X, Millennials, Z) – rather we will have younger and older bases detailed to outline how much customers have in common.

As more organizations turn to focus their model on customer-centricity, we know it is important to provide you with the tools necessary to understand how your customers could interact, respond, and anticipate items in the customer journey – from a self-guided portal to direct help. All of us are impacted directly by healthcare. But that doesn’t mean it reaches 100% of us equitably. If the healthcare industry begins to listen to the feedback – empowering the actual words of the customers – communication surrounding healthcare becomes a powerful tool in building a customer-centric experience.

Listening with Purpose

Improving your customer’s journey begins with listening to what they are saying directly and indirectly about your company, product, plan, or medication. This isn’t as simple as surveyed feedback – it must be processed with conversational intelligence that creates data-backed stories that bring the voice of the customer (VoC) into the spotlight when it works alongside human listening (such as the Authenticx platform).

This is the method of customer-centricity (read more about this method in our 3rd Customer Voices Report). It starts and ends with the customer to be able to close the gap that exists between your business and them. Launching an active ear-to-ground experience encourages comprehension and empowers each unique voice. When you leverage collected data to transform your organization, personalized communication can impact all customers – no matter how you anticipate generational preferences – around shared values that connect, comfort, and cultivate the authenticity desired.

Self-Service Works – if it Works

It’s true. You figured it out! Self-service technology, such as portals and tutorial pathways, enables the independence and support that many customers crave to meet their shared needs. Being able to click along to learn or pace through pages to complete an order brings a codependent reliance on the system of service.  

But what if it doesn’t work? 

• The page’s ‘NEXT’ button fails to, well, “next”  
• The kiosk screen doesn’t turn on when plugged in 
• Your preferred method of payment isn’t accepted 
• Your card causes the infamous loading icon to spin into oblivion 

What could be worse? Nobody is available to help you when the service experience turns into confusion, frustration, and even a loss of business. 

Authenticx CEO, Amy Brown, explained this issue in our 3^rd Customer Voices Report centered around customer-centricity: 

“…we’re seeing implementation of digital solutions without proper R&D and clarity on the problem organizations are trying to solve. What I’ve heard is customers want self-service if it works. If not, they simply want to connect to a human who can help them navigate to a workable solution.” 

Download the Report

Download the Customer Voices in Healthcare Report: The Rise of Customer Centricity Across Healthcare.

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Don’t Leave the Mailbox Flag Up 

Each time a customer gets stuck in a journey, the Eddy Effect is initiated. Depending on how your customer interacts from this point on is reflective of the line of solutions your business has employed. They can contact you directly from a pop-out HELP(!) menu and get a solution that resolves their problem – or more often – they’ll go through countless efforts to get in touch with you:

1. Visit multiple pages on a website
2. Find a phone number on one of those pages
3. Call that number
4. Get redirected to another number
5. Told to contact a 3rd party vendor to resolve their issue

When they don’t receive instant help and become irritated, deterred, and apathetic.

This is the spiral of the Eddy Effect that too many customers go through without a change from the organization. They can leave any kind of feedback – written reviews, recorded calls, chat messages, emails, etc. – and if your business fails to listen, changes necessary to create a customer-centric experience cannot be aggregated, analyzed, and activated. Staying strategic in crafting goals for optimal results for your varied audience draws a direct line to building sustained success via multigenerational efforts.

Often, a customer’s desires can stem from preferential expectations based on generational experiences and technological advancements made during the 20th and 21st centuries. Understanding how younger and older audiences communicate can help you uncover the missing link in forming a communicative multigenerational customer experience.

More About Multigenerational Healthcare Communication

Next Blog: Generating Communication

Continue to join us in our blog series about multigenerational communication that highlights younger and older generational expectations, how the healthcare industry has and is behaving to produce solutions, and a review of building a responsive customer experience. The next installment in the series will be about how studying younger and older generations can overlap to help healthcare communicate across multiple generations simultaneously.

About Authenticx

Authenticx was founded to analyze and activate customer interaction data at scale. Why? We wanted to reveal transformational opportunities in healthcare. We are on a mission to help humans understand humans. With a combined 100+ years of leadership experience in pharma, payer, and healthcare organizations, we know first-hand the challenges and opportunities that our clients face because we’ve been in your shoes.

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