Episode 118: Market Research, Know your Customer

Speaker 1: You are listening to your Practice Made Perfect, Support Protection and Advice For Practicing Medical Professionals brought to you by SVMIC.

J. Baugh: Hello everyone and welcome to this episode of Your Practice Made Perfect. My name is J. Baugh, and I will be your host for today's episode. Today we're going to be talking about creating a better patient experience with customer insights and to join us and talking about this important topic is Mary Elzey. Mary leads the customer insights and strategy team at Stable Kernel, a custom market research and software development firm based in Atlanta. She works across categories to create, refine, and position new products and brands for clients across industries as varied as technology to cleaning products to healthcare. She has worked with brands such as Bridgestone, Mountain Dew, Walmarts, SC Johnson, LP Building Solutions, Black & Decker and Kohler and SVMIC. In fact, she played a key role in jump-starting the SVMIC podcast, during focus groups she led with the SVMIC team. So Mary, welcome to today's episode.

Mary: Thank you, J.. I'm so happy to be here with you.

J. Baugh: So we've heard about your official bio. So tell me a little more about yourself. What excites you most about your job?

Mary: J., I would have to say I'm an insanely curious person. I love observing and understanding people and figuring out how to make life better, even in small ways. That's why I love my career in market research. Every new project starts as a complicated mystery that needs to be unraveled. And as a market researcher, it's my job to build customer empathy and to translate that into actionable ideas. For example, I recently wrapped up a research project with Drawdown Georgia, which is the first state-centered effort to crowd solve for climate change.

J. Baugh: Sounds like you guys have some really big things happening. So can you tell me more about Drawdown Georgia

Mary: Sure. Drawdown Georgia is working with our market research team to understand the awareness of and interest in climate change solutions. From reduced food waste to better transportation, we, as a team, needed to understand what people are interested in in order to get them involved in this effort.

J. Baugh: So what types of strategies do you and your team use to do these types of projects?

Mary: We have a lot of different tools in our toolbox, J Depending on the problem our team is trying to solve, we deploy some or all of these tools in combination. We can do anything from qualitative research, which is really all about stories and storytelling and understanding how people think and feel. It's dealing with non-numeric data. This can look like one-on-one conversations with customers, either clients, real customers, or proxies, focus groups, or even asking survey participants to submit open-ended video responses to questions. We also do things like quantitative research. That's the kind of research that relies on numbers. That would be something like sending out a survey to a group of people in order to gather data, to inspire solutions for problems. Another type of research would be a combination of these two. It's what we call user research. And that's when we ask users of a product or a service to interact with that product or service.

And then we observe their interactions to understand how to make that product or service even better. Once we do the research, we will have most of the pieces of the puzzle. Then we collaborate with our clients to figure out how we can act on that information.

J. Baugh: Well, that sounds like really fascinating work, but honestly, I'm not sure how that relates to the medical field. So how do you see this type of work translating to medical practices?

Mary: That's a very fair question, J.. At the end of the day, this type of research is all about solving problems by better understanding your customer. Any type of business or service can benefit from this type of information. It doesn't matter if you're working in healthcare or building products. Customer insights are used to drive innovation by forcing organizations to see themselves from the outside in, challenging them to question and refine their assumptions. Customers frankly have more choices than they've ever had before in today's healthcare landscape. And more and more, they expect a seamless experience. Think about businesses that are considered disruptors like Carvana or Warby Parker or Netflix. What they did is they looked at processes that were inherently broken and unfriendly to the customer and re-imagined them from the customer's perspective. We see that trend happening in healthcare now.

J. Baugh: Yeah. Well that makes sense. So what are the advantages of applying a customer first approach to medical practices?

Mary: Sure. There's really three big things, right? It'll make for happy customers, make for hopefully more referrals and provide continuity of care, which means better care and lower costs.

J. Baugh: So if I'm a small practice and I don't have a designated marketing team or an employee, or even if I do, how can I use the resources I have to really mold and improve the customer patient experience?

Mary: Great question, J.. A lot of times when I work with clients, I find that they have more information than they thought they had available. So it's always a good idea to just stop for a minute and talk about what are the things you're already naturally collecting from your customers today? A lot of times practices are collecting data on their patients and they have information that they didn't even realize they could do something with. One of the easiest ways to get started with customer research is to do something that's called a net promoter score. How that works is you ask your customers or your patients, how likely are you to recommend our practice to friends or family? They answer that on a scale of 0 to 10. And from that information, you're able to subtract those people at the lower part of the scale with those from the upper end of the scale, to have a composite score that you can then benchmark against other practices, other types of businesses, etc, to really understand how are we doing as a practice, how are folks feeling about us?

Would they refer us to friends and family? It's a really good indicator of future success. It can also be a wonderful measure when you're trying to understand how can we improve because you generally follow up a net promoter question with, "Why did you give us that rating?" And we've seen results all the way from, "Bad parking," as why I gave you that rating. Or "I was really mad about having to pay for parking," up to a nine or a 10 where folks say, "I feel like my doctor's my friend. I will highly recommend you for anybody who's in a similar situation."

J. Baugh: So as the shopping model becomes more common for healthcare, what can healthcare businesses learn from other businesses in terms of providing a better customer experience?

Mary: Absolutely, great question. One of the first things we would recommend right off the bat is to take a look at your website and to take a look at your website, both from a desktop computer experience, as well as from a mobile experience. Most people are checking the internet now from their phones. So it's very, very important to make sure you have a mobile friendly website. That can absolutely be the difference between someone choosing your practice over another. If you can offer anything online in terms of scheduling, I know that can be a nightmare for healthcare providers, but anything just as simple as get a call back number to schedule an appointment within the next 15 minutes. I know patients are very frustrated when it seems like it takes forever to get an appointment. Anything that can be done to make that experience better for your patients, I think will go a long way. Another thing is to really take a look at your physical space. Consider the experience of arriving at your practice. It might sound silly, but drive in one day, pretend you're a patient coming to your practice.

Is the signage good? Is there well-marked parking? Is it a well lit lobby? Is it clear where I'm supposed to go when I walk in? It can be really, really useful to understand the journey from your patient's point of view and figure out all the ways that you can make it easier to get into your practice.

J. Baugh: So let me ask you this question. If a medical practice came to you and said, this, "We're really struggling with our customer experience and we've been losing patients. We know some of our problems, but we feel like we're missing something. Can you help us?" If someone asked you that, how would you approach that type of ask?

Mary: Well, first, we approach every client problem as its own unique animal. Every single time we get questions of this nature it is different. There are absolutely some frameworks that we rely on and some off the top questions we will ask such as something like, "You say you're losing patients. What does that mean? Are we talking lots of people? Are we talking revenue? What are those business pain points that you need to solve with this type of research?" And then we go back to our toolbox that I mentioned earlier in our conversation where we look at, is this a qualitative issue? Do we need to interview some people and really understand their thoughts and feelings? Is this a quantitative issue where we need to send out a survey and get numeric data in order to figure out what's going on? Or is it a blend of both? Do we need to look at your website and understand where there might be some issues or opportunities that could be fixed there? Generally speaking, we take a very custom approach with every client that we work with to solve their unique needs.

J. Baugh: So what big trends do you see coming in the world of consumer friendly medical practices?

Mary: Wow, this is an exciting time in the world. We see customers as patients shopping more than ever before for healthcare. We're seeing this trend across all the industries and clients we worked with towards seamless experiences. Folks have very little patience for what we call friction in the buying process. So anything we can do to tighten that knit between a customer or a patient and their desire to visit your practice, anything we can do along those ways to tighten those steps and make it more enjoyable and easier to do is really important. We're also seeing personalization as a huge trend and medicine is certainly a part of this trend in terms of looking at data collection and analytics to offer a more personalized way to healthcare. There are a number of companies out there that are relying on data to drive their practice into a more modern type of experience.

And then, of course with COVID, we saw the switch to remote care. We continue to see that as a trend that is going to continue to grow and grow and grow and grow across every facet of the medical field that could potentially be held virtually. In addition, we think it's really cool and really worth noting things like wearable technologies, like the Apple watch and other personal wellness devices as tools that patients and their doctors can work on together to do some more lifestyle monitoring. Right? So if your goal is to lose a little bit of weight this year, you want to increase your exercise, you and your doctor together could set up a program on your Apple watch to figure that out together and report in together. And it could be more like a health check, a health coach, quick checkups, as opposed to only seeing a doctor once a year.

J. Baugh: That's interesting that you mentioned technology because that certainly seems to be an area that touches every aspect of our lives these days. So what role do you see technology playing in the healthcare practice of the future?

Mary: As you can see, a lot of these trends involve data. More data gives us more information to help us understand how we can make life easier for both patients and practices. For patients it's all about being able to log into a computer or their cell phone or an app, whatever device they want to use and figure out, "Okay, here are all my stats. Here's everything I need to know. Here's where I'm on track for my health goals," etc, etc, but it's all there all in one place and accessible at any point in time that I might want to look at it.

For the practices it's all about collecting information digitally to help in really big ways. It could be something as simple as reducing human error when you send out reminders. It could be something as large as we are seeing a lot of data trends that show us our customers want a better experience when they're in our waiting room and that includes better Wi-Fi. Completely making that up here. But you can look at that data and it can start to point you in the right direction in terms of what the practice needs as well as what the patient needs.

J. Baugh: So, what kind of information do doctors and practice managers need to create a more consumer friendly practice?

Mary: So, we like to use an acronym. Everybody loves their acronyms. We call it establishing SMART goals. And what SMART stands for is, Specific, Measurable, Actionable, Relevant, and Time bound. So once you have that information set, you've got a goal in mind, you have it defined, then you decide what kind of data you need. So it could be a short series of patient interviews, or it could be a database of satisfaction information. It depends on what your goals and objectives are.

J. Baugh: So Mary, this has all been really interesting and very valuable information. Before we wrap up this episode, are there any last minute tips or advice that you would like to leave with our listeners?

Mary: Absolutely. A fun thing to do and a very helpful thing to do is to take a page from that show Undercover Boss... Don't know if you've ever seen that, but where the boss actually goes into the factory floor or restaurant and experiences it from his customer's point of view. Same thing could absolutely apply here for you that are running practices. So how this would work is, go into your office. Put on a hat or a wig, or don't be that silly, just go and sit in your waiting room and see the experience from the patient's point of view. What kinds of questions are your patients asking as they come in the door? Are they confused about where to go when they walk in? What kind of changes could help you prevent this confusion? Can you add more content to your website? What could you do to make that patient experience all the better right when they walk in the door.

And also take a moment and evaluate that customer's process from the entire time they are with you from the minute they walk in the door until when they leave. Map out what those steps look like and understand where there might be points of friction that you could make a little bit better and make your patient happier and make them come back and refer you to their friends and family.

J. Baugh: Mary, I certainly do appreciate you giving us such a valuable and helpful information for us. And so I thank you for being with us today.

Mary: Thank you, J. I really appreciate it. This was fun.

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