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It is said, that for every $1 you spend on customer experience you gain $3 back, which is a pretty sweet ROI. So where can healthcare manufacturers look to start enhancing their customer experience?
First, lets clearly define what we are talking about, when we say customer experience. Jan Beery, CEO of KBK Communications writes it best in her recent blog, Employer Branding, Corporate Branding, and Customer Experience.
Customer experience (CX) is the product of an interaction between an organization and a customer over the duration of their relationship.[1] This interaction is made up of three parts: the customer journey, the brand touchpoints the customer interacts with, and the environments the customer experiences (including digital environment) during their experience. A good customer experience means that the individual's experience during all points of contact matches the individual's expectations.
Manufacturers must rethink their service and evaluate it through the lens of their customer. How does your company interact with its prospects and customers at every touchpoint? Is it easy? Are you creating a consistent experience across all channels?
Typically, when we think about the competition we list competitors that have similar products or services to ours. We will use a medical distributor, for example, this distributor is name Medical Products & Services Company B, a national distributor focusing in the primary care space. If we made a list of my competitors, it would look something like this:
Taking it a step further, we then look at what touch points may affect my brand’s customer experience. Who are the influencers in these touch points. My competitive ecosystem now may look like:
Next, we evaluate the alternatives to your brand. Why would a customer choose some alternative to you, a national distributor, what is the benefit? What tools could they use to seek out information on medical products and supply chain tools? Now your competitive ecosystem may look like this:
But what many are missing in healthcare supply chain is that we don’t just compete with like competitors or alternatives to us. We compete, every day, with those that shift their models to provide best-in-class customer experience.
Customer expectations are set by these brands. Those that can shift their service models quickly to provide a better, faster, easier, frictionless customer experience will win. Identifying where it makes sense to shift is the tricky part.
Literally, write it down, with a pen (or pencil, google doc, your choice). Where can you meet your customer earlier in their journey? Where can you shift what you're doing to save the customer time, make life easier and delight them? The number one most important factor in customer loyalty is the reduction of customer effort/friction.
Fifty-two percent of dissatisfied customers stop buying after a bad experience. Providing a delightful customer experience is critical to your brand reaching the 15-year lifespan and beyond. Today’s buyer is shifting toward the millennial generation and very few from this audience remember a time before digital. From research to purchase you are curating your customer’s experience.
A journey map is a great tool for showing you what is already happening. Your job is to reinvent it.
The customer experience does not start when your customer contacts you or vice versa. It starts when they begin researching a problem, product or service. If you are present in their online research then you have already started to positively affect and nurture that customer relationship. Give them access to the information that will allow them to answer their own questions, simplify their research process. In healthcare, we often hold the cards close because “we don’t want our competitors to know what we are doing.” SURPRISE, they already know and if they don’t they will get the information. Making it easy for your customers to access the information they need about your products online, does not put you at a competitive disadvantage, instead, it is just the opposite. You are breaking down barriers in your customer’s experience and in turn, creating a positive experience from the start.
In addition to information access, meet your customers where they are whether it is on social media (yes, your customers ARE on social media. Next question?), via podcast on their drive to work, on their mobile devices or elsewhere. Find (or even invent) ways to stay in front of, educate and help your customers through the channels they are already on. Make sure the experience you are curating across all channels is consistent, memorable and even sharable. You are shaping your customer’s experience from the start of their research to their decision to purchase.
Customer retention makes your organization more profitable. The number one, most important, factor in customer loyalty is the reduction of customer effort or friction. How can your organization provide a best-in-class experience? Today and in the years ahead, having a frictionless, thoughtful, digital experience will aid in shortening your selling cycle, creating an exceptional experience and retaining happy loyal customers.
KBK Communications is a digital marketing agency exclusively focused on the Healthcare Supply Chain. Our team of industry veterans offers over 50 years of experience in healthcare sales, marketing, administration, and direct patient care. We pride ourselves on becoming an extension of your team collaborating to reach your company's growth goals. Our keen understanding of the market and your customer allows us to help you execute strategic digital marketing programs with sales at the forefront.
At KBK Communications, we focus on customer experience, user experience, and digital transformation from research to purchase.
We offer a full spectrum of digital, PIM, CRM and customer experience solutions: strategy, paid media, creative, data, custom integrations, and technology.
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