Healthcare CX: How to Go from Ailing to Excellent

Healthcare can mean life and death. Yet healthcare CX, sub-par to begin with, has relapsed over the last few years. Stuck in the bottom quartile of all industries in the most recent Forrester CX Index report, it has also been dropping in the last three years in a row under the same benchmark.

Here are more examples:

1. 81% of consumers are not satisfied with their healthcare experiences (Source: PwC)

2. Commercial health plan member satisfaction declined overall, largely driven by a 33-point decline in satisfaction with customer service (Source: J.D. Power)

3. State of Digital Customer Service Report 2020, (Source: Dimensional Research)

4. State of Agent Experience Report 2022 (Source: BenchmarkPortal)

5. State of Knowledge Management 2023 (Source: KMWorld)

6. Forrester survey on top customer service pain points 2015

So, what should healthcare companies do to improve customer service? Interestingly, many of the findings in items #3, #4, and #5, outlined above, lead to the poor performance outlined in items #1 and #2, offering a roadmap for healthcare organizations to get on a path to CX and EX (employee experience) transformation. Here are some steps they should take:

Accelerated by millennial and Gen Z preferences and the pandemic lockdowns, consumers have doubled down on digital with 80% saying that they had increased the use of digital channels during the pandemic and 90% of digital novices saying they will remain digital, according to research surveys conducted by the likes of McKinsey and others. Moreover, today’s digital patients want to go beyond simply checking their appointment or billing status to accomplishing more complex tasks such as research and selection of plans and human-assisted, secure form-filling. Where they are not able to self-serve, they are looking for answers through human-assisted digital channels such as live chat and messaging apps, where they often “live.” This would require healthcare companies to go beyond the basics to provide service through touchpoints like next-gen chatbots, messaging, live chat, cobrowsing, in-app service, and proactive notifications.

While self-service is getting increasingly smarter and more effective, there are still queries from digital-first customers that require human assistance over digital channels like messaging and chat and if all else fails, over the phone or in person. Unless customer conversations are all “hubbed” or unified into a single desktop, customer service agents won’t have complete context. They then wind up asking the consumer to repeat information, a big no-no for good CX.

The biggest deterrent to good CX is getting inconsistent answers across touchpoints and lack of knowledge among customer service reps, according to a Forrester survey of 10,000+ consumers, sponsored by eGain. As mentioned earlier, 65% of consumers point to this problem when it comes to healthcare customer service. The cause? Inconsistent knowledge silos across the enterprise. The solution? An omnichannel knowledge hub with content management, conversational AI, generative AI, and analytics, all unified and orchestrated in one place. This approach will ensure that the knowledge—content, knowhow, and insights—is correct, consumable, compliant, and consistent.

Technology matters as the world goes digital and AI. So do best practices and domain expertise. Make sure you pick a partner whose technology is proven, who has had success at scale in the healthcare sector, and who is compliant with privacy and security standards such as HIPPA. Does the vendor provide end-to-end services, including training/education, implementation, and managed services? Do they have a formalized customer success program? Do they offer risk-free production pilots—not just a toy sandbox—to try out their solution with expert guidance, all free of charge in the pilot phase. Vendors’ willingness to put real skin in the game shows their commitment to your success and confidence in their own solution.

Prioritizing customer service digitalization, unifying conversations and knowledge with omnichannel hubs, and working with a proven solution provider will enable healthcare CX to go from ailing to excellent!