Does Your HealthTech Company Have the Right CX Strategy?

The Article in 60 Seconds

Big tech players like Amazon, Google, and Facebook have changed the customer experience forever by providing highly personalized, intuitive, and expedient service.

Because of this, businesses of all types must consistently evaluate and adapt their customer experience approach to meet growing expectations. If you’re a marketer in any industry—including health IT—you need to be well versed in the art and science of customer experience.

Mary Drumond, CMO of Worthix joined us on Studio CMO. From our conversation, we discovered three questions every marketer must ask when it comes to customer experience:

• Do we know what drives our customers’ decisions?
• Does our message align with what we deliver?
• Do we prioritize impact over frequency?

Think about This

• The 2021 Consumer Support Trends Report from Intercom found that 73% of customer leaders say customer expectations for personalized and fast support are rising, but only 42% are sure they are meeting those expectations.
• A McKinsey survey determined that B2B companies see digital interactions as two to three times more important to their customers than traditional sales.
• According to Studio CMO podcast guest Mary Drumond, there are five drivers responsible for all decisions: cost, quality, price, relationship, brand identification, and social proof.

CX Must Be Used as a Growth Strategy

On a recent episode of Studio CMO, our CEO John Farkas spoke with Mary Drumond, Chief Marketing Officer at Worthix, a self-adaptive AI platform that captures insights based on customers’ individual needs as they change in real time.

She shared about the importance of assessing customer experiences in order to facilitate business growth in both the B2B and B2C space. According to Mary, “Your customers’ experiences must be linked to your profit and they have to be used as a growth strategy. And if that’s not how you’re doing CX, then you’re not doing it right.”

With only 42% of customer leaders feeling confident that they are meeting customers’ rising expectations for personalized and fast support, now is the time to consider changes to your CX approach. From our conversation, we discovered three questions every HealthTech marketer should ask to determine if your customer experience strategy supports overall growth.

Question #1: Do We Know What Drives our Customers’ Decisions?

During the podcast episode, Mary spoke about five drivers that impact all purchasing decisions across all industries. These are considerations that help buyers determine if a product or service is worth it, and different purchasing scenarios will bring different drivers to the surface. The drivers include:

• Cost
• Quality
• Relationship
• Brand Identification
• Social Proof

As a marketer in the health tech space, you need to know which drivers are most important to your customers so you can position your products and services appropriately.

For example, Mary shared about her work with Praxair, a specialty gas company that serves various industries, including healthcare. Worthix conducted a study and found that the biggest decision driver for Praxair customers was quality because a low-quality product would threaten the health and lives of their patients. Above all, their customers needed to trust the brand, so Praxair focused its corporate messaging on its quality control processes and maintenance before raising its prices.

By delivering a customer experience that is a solution to your buyers’ needs, you can use CX to accelerate growth. This article from KelloggInsight, based on insights from Nicholas Caffentzis, Senior Fellow and Adjunct Professor with the Kellogg Markets & Customers Initiative, discusses a survey Caffentzis conducted of marketing and product leaders from 20 businesses in the health tech industry. He found when companies developed a tool and then sought an application for it, customers were less likely to adopt it. The companies were most successful when they gained insight on customer issues from the outset of product development.

First, you must know who your target buyers are and what real problems they face. Everything else should follow from there.

Question #2: Does Our Message Align with what We Deliver?

Mary pointed out that one of the biggest reasons for drops in customer experience is the expectation gap—what happens when a buyer does research on your company but then their experience as a customer does not match the great things they read. This leads to frustration, which can turn into anger, and eventually result in a churned customer.

In its survey of B2B businesses, McKinsey & Company found that digital interaction and self-service is increasingly important in the B2B space, and that “getting it right” means delivering on the three things buyers value most: speed, transparency, and expertise.

If you position your offerings as being easy to use and providing cost and time savings, but your customers don’t experience these benefits, you’ve let them down in a significant way. Take an honest look at your product suite and ask yourself, “do our actual capabilities match what we’re saying to the market?” If not, it’s time to revise your messaging andprioritize the product enhancements you need to stand out.

This underscores the importance of customer testimonials and case studies in your marketing strategy. Your prospects don’t just want to hear what you think about you; they want to know about what other companies and users have experienced with your products and services.

Your prospects don’t just want to hear what you think about you.

By leaning on your existing customers’ words, you can add credibility to your brand and help ensure your future customers’ expectations are met.

Question #3: Do We Prioritize Impact over Frequency?

Several small hiccups in a customer relationship are less likely to cause the customer to leave than one, big mistake. That’s because when it comes to customer experience, impact makes a bigger difference than frequency.

HealthTech marketers need to know what is the one thing that could happen to your customer that would cause them to immediately churn. What is the “last straw” you must avoid at all cost? Is it a billing issue that costs your customers significant funds? A faulty system capability that impacts data integrity? Or, a negative personal interaction that causes mistrust?

What is the “last straw” you must avoid at all cost?

By evaluating your business and determining its potential threats and weaknesses, you can then take strategic steps to set your customer relationships up for success.

Another key takeaway from Caffentzis’s survey discussed in the Kellogg Insights article is that B2B companies are underinvesting in tools and processes to capture customer usage information, and failing to establish processes to consistently gather customer feedback. You must invest in yourself first to learn what is and isn’t working, and then invest in mitigating high-impact customer experience areas.

The First Thing to Do after You Read this Article

Determine your answers to the three questions above and create a game plan for addressing areas of opportunity. Identify ways your marketing and customer experience teams can work together to achieve CX goals.