Trending | 2023 Healthcare Predictions

Experience

Customer Journey | Business-Audience Relationship | Employee Retention and Connection | Equitable Healthcare

Defined by Merriam-Webster, experience is:

“practical knowledge, skill, or practice derived from direct observation of or participation in events or in a particular activity”

“the conscious events that make up an individual life”

“experience,” Merriam-Webster.com Dictionary, https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/experience. Accessed 11/11/2022.

Experience is what Authenticx investigates, lifts, and shares most over other key themes. When magnifying experience, four topics come to mind. These topics are the customer journey, the business-audience relationship, employee retention and connection, and equitable healthcare. Why should experience drive your mission? It’s critical healthcare business leaders understand why each moment matters along the customer journey. Standardizing customer-centricity is a courageous step that systems must employ to transform the healthcare experience.

Amplify the Customer Journey

Understanding the customer journey involves the endeavor to establish customer-centricity via active listening and commitment to improvement. When the problem is understood first, the impact on customer experience can be measured. Succinctly stated by Amy Brown, Authenticx CEO and founder, “it’s everybody’s business to listen to the voice of their customers.” 

So, put on your headphones and turn up the volume. 

The journey is viewable through unsolicited feedback from the actual words of the customer. As detailed in an article from PwC, strong connections that establish trust and mediation are made by spotlighting the voice of the customer. If this connection does not evolve beyond surveys and quality measurements, journeys begin to skip tracks (leading to immense frustration). When insights are gathered about the customers, organizations are better equipped to offer accessible and personalized communications that cater to customer preferences, environments, and investments. As discussed by Christina Rosario of Advanced Data Systems Corps., this initiative enables businesses to create portals and self-paced guides that empower the customer to become a partner. Remaining open to improvement balances the scale between humans and artificial intelligence (AI) to develop reliance in order to achieve solutions for your business and your audience. 

Commit to a Business-Audience Relationship

A commitment to strong relationships between business and audience withstands and offsets an unpredictable economy. This is when the Eddy Effect is often introduced to organizations. Investing in data solutions shines a light on the value of this business-audience bond. Streamlining work and growth opportunities with training, data-backed storytelling, and compliance improves communication and creates collective success. If a business falters in solution-based relationships, the agent and physician delivery will mimic the business’s delivery. Anticipating a dynamic relationship at all levels allows a business’s health to sustain through external interference, such as a recession or pandemic. 

Value Employee Retention and Connection

Maintaining a customer-centric approach is associated with how organizations retain and connect to their own employees. According to an article from Wolters Kluwer, recognizing why an employee got into the profession draws emotions of empathy, pride, and motivation that are subsequently mirrored in business culture. This brings an unheard worth to your business. As Leslie Pagel, Chief Customer Officer, explains, “When we feel connected to the customer, we have a sense of purpose, and purpose is the single most important driver for employee engagement.” 

This relational driver solves employee retention problems, prompts sophisticated action, and tightens a grip on innovative and evolving care, such as conversational intelligence and multistep language processing. Ultimately, the best work is performed by employees who respect what they do and how it can change healthcare. Recognizing the value of your employees and seeing systemic gaps creates a more equitable healthcare solution.

Impact through Equitable Healthcare

Holistically viewing how social determinants of health affect business practices impact the experience that healthcare and cognitive AI offer. This can arrive in various ways that include but are not limited to significant paradigm shifts, as described by Sachin H. Jain, President and CEO of SCAN Group & Health Plan, for Forbes in 2022: 

• Customer segmentation caters to diverse groups while increasing inclusion. 
• The battle between value-based care and needs-based care, or unbundling, continues as plan personalization can save money for the customer or align with anticipated care. 
• Vertical integration could create unforeseen fallout or gaps in coverage and communication both within the organization and the customer base. 
• Astonishing feats are made in the biopharmaceutical industry that drastically innovates, yet often bring a considerable cost to an underprepared market unable to support them. Ultimately, breakthroughs can generate relationship breakdowns. 

Authenticx’s Chief Technology Officer, Michael Armstrong, summarizes this topic well, “…some leadership teams and companies start focusing more on their culture and business processes so they can leverage the technology.” Tools like Speech Analyticx^TM, Smart Predict^TM, Smart Sample^TM, and Montage Builder^TM all provide insight into piecing the puzzle that is human understanding.  Data is the composition that drives a harmonious experience, so ensure your business’s products are as diverse as your audiences. 

Data

Data-backed Storytelling | Data Analysis | The Value of AI

Defined by Merriam-Webster, data is:

“factual information (such as measurements or statistics) used as a basis for reasoning, discussion, or calculation”

“information output by a sensing device or organ that includes both useful and irrelevant or redundant information and must be processed to be meaningful”

“data,” Merriam-Webster.com Dictionary, https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/data. Accessed 11/11/2022.

Data is authentic. It is raw, unwarranted, and necessary. We understand the cost of data – good and bad – when bringing the human back to healthcare. Data is numerical, visual, and expository. When digging deeper into data, three prominent topics form a compass that points to critical demand. This compass is comprised of data-backed storytelling, data analysis, and the value of artificial intelligence. When they work together, they craft narratives. In healthcare, data is constantly collected – but are we using it effectively to share the success of a call center, a new line of medication, or an updated transfer of care? Employing tactics that improve a product for a customer starts with assessing data from all angles. 

Engage in Data-backed Storytelling

Data-backed storytelling emboldens the urge to make an impact. Since data is vast and trackable, a natural story arc blooms to colorize the voice of the customer. Telling stories through data, as considered by Jain for Forbes, wraps an immersive conversation with solutions that emphasize a business’s return on investment (ROI). 

Leslie Pagel delivers this sentiment with an encompassing one-liner, “Storytelling principles apply to any type of data.” Since we know data holds storytelling capabilities, unlock your impact today. Not only is storytelling applicable to data, but when a team is trained and understands how to produce effective stories from collected data, industry change is activated. 

Visualize Data Analysis

Data analysis has been seen in an old-school light with one go-to method: surveys. Surveys provide feedback, but the feedback is closed beyond the initial response. If you want to get to know somebody, you shouldn’t ask yes-no questions. Why should feedback be any different? 

In tandem, conversations are infinite. Technology gives companies the ability to do more with existing interaction data. When conversations are transformed into graphs, sound bites, or trends, two parties are always the winner – you and your customer. The growth in AI and human understanding will reinforce companies to redirect resources to capture and harness conversation analysis. Are AI and machine learning (ML) the end-all-be-all? Are they the magic potions for customer care and business health? Not exactly. 

Transform CX with Conversational Data

This guide provides the ultimate source of informations about unsolicited feedback and how it can be leveraged to transform your customer experience strategy.

Download the Resource

Embrace the Value of AI

The value of AI has been and will continue to surpass expectations. When “AI” is heard, images of autonomous vehicles and robot uprisings flash across the mind. This is not the AI innovation in healthcare. AI tools across healthcare are leveraging conversational data and capitalizing on tools that actively learn to reframe missions, engage human impact, and source insight. Although these are advantages, AI and ML can still only do so much. It can redact content and disguise voices in unstructured data. Noted in the article from Wolters Kluwer, it can prove competency with visual ROI points. It works as a measurement tool for planning best practices. However, the true power of AI and ML lies in conjunction with conversational analysis, like human listening. 

Only after the meeting of “robot and human” can AI be truly planted as the flag on the mountain of relevant data insights. Those atop the mountain are customers and patients, life science companies, providers, and payers. All three of Authenticx’s leaders agree: 

• Amy: “It’s becoming an insights source for all functional areas — not just the operations side of the house…” 
• Leslie: “…they’ll begin piecing the customer journey together and examining it over time to see where customers get stuck — the highs and lows, frustration and gratitude.” 
• Michael: “Previously, you could get away with saying, We’re implementing AI or digital transformation and get a blank check, but that’s not going to fly anymore.” 

Technology

Security and Privacy | Cloud Reliance | Telehealth

Defined by Merriam-Webster, technology is:

“the practical application of knowledge especially in a particular area”

“the specialized aspects of a particular field of endeavor”

“technology,” Merriam-Webster.com Dictionary, https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/technology. Accessed 11/11/2022.

As technology revolutionizes, the willingness and excitement to jump in line for the next big thing are apparent. And they should stir people to act. Conversely, making informed decisions around new models is just as important. Review innovations as they become available, especially if they concern security and privacy, cloud reliance, and telehealth. 

Enhance Security and Privacy

If your trusted technology director says to be serious about security and privacy, increase your safety measures as soon as you are able. Voice data, namely unstructured data, is pushing the limits of technology into a new era where the expectation of privacy is unsaid and undefined. According to the American Medical Association, the demand is at an all-time high – even if nobody knows what it looks like. Although this can be worrisome, don’t let it deter enhancing current models because the industry is experiencing this guardian duty together. 

Create Cloud Reliance

Using the old standard of stacking servers is moot. Supported by an article from Gartner, the cloud is comfortable, transposable, and transferable. The communication in the cloud is boundless and while that is rousing, it should also signal a level of caution. Backed by Rosario from Advanced Data Systems Corporation, the cloud needs to be monitored and guarded with safety nets, like firewalls. Using the cloud to hold health data should be treated like online banking, it makes the lives of the business and customer simpler but creates a need for audits. As technology eclipses, day after day, following these trends can better prepare you to allocate attention and resources to protect vital human data. 

Improve Telehealth

Telehealth and virtual care demand soared throughout the pandemic, according to the CDC. Since onboarding these options, it hasn’t slowed down. Not only is it being used, but Tuburksi for Forbes claims providers and payers are being requested to have this included in coverage, not a hidden or optional item. We know life isn’t always easy and certainly can feel unfair. Consideration of comfort, transportation, and time contribute to telehealth benefits. As mentioned in the Wolters Kluwer article, evidence-based research (EBR) brings telehealth to the next step in healthcare. Renewing the standard of how healthcare can interact virtually with businesses and customers intertwines access and technological awareness with privacy protection. 

While looking at trends can wrap intimidation and enthusiasm in one bow for a holiday party, it is essential to foresee these outlooks for budgeting, resources, and sustainability purposes. Businesses can flourish when they are built around experience, data, and technology. These are growing focal points for customers, vendors, partners, and industry leaders. Why get left behind when now is the time to prepare for the future? If one step can be taken toward progress, take two. 

In conclusion, the cost of implementing new practices is far outweighed by the potential for strength and stability in business relationships, big data, the value of conversational AI, and the security necessary in healthcare. People want to be heard – listen to them; the data is there. People want to understand – provide the tools that empower them; the data is there. People want to make an impact – join them in the journey; the data is there. Upcoming years will spark staggering evolution and untrekked paths – don’t turn around before reaching the mountaintop. 

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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