Creating Positive First Impressions Through Customer Journey Mapping
You’ve probably heard the expression, “You never get a second chance to make a first impression.” The flip side of this troubling truth is that once an impression is made, it’s difficult, if nearly impossible, to change that perspective. This admonition rings particularly true for companies that regularly engage with customers, and is especially critical in healthcare.
In today’s rapidly changing and complex healthcare ecosystem, it is essential that healthcare companies gain a deep understanding of their customers — their pain points, their sensitivities, and their triggers for decision making.
Over the past 35 years, NASCO has acquired, assembled, aggregated and analyzed data used to model and anticipate the attributes and motivations of customers. We use these results to predict what customers are likely to buy, decisions they may make, or actions they will probably take.
Yet, there is still more valuable information we can obtain. For instance, what is the individual’s particular situation? Where are they in that process, and what ‘job’ or task are they trying to accomplish? What are their individual expectations at a more personal level?
Getting answers to these questions provides a deepened level of understanding, leading to a key but often missing ingredient in successful customer relationships – empathy. It can be gained through customer journey mapping. Customer journey mapping is a collaborative process of gathering qualitative and quantitative data to understand customers’ desired journeys, and identify gaps between their expectations and their perceptions of the experience, delivered at points along the journey. The results of journey mapping can help Plans meet customers at the right time with the right interactions to deliver a personalized and positive impression.
According to Linda Leigh Brock, NASCO’s Vice President Product Management, “It’s clear that painful interactions provide an opportunity to improve. But even ‘good’ interactions can be better or elevated beyond what customers may even expect.”
In a recent collaborative exercise with one of our Plans, the combined team developed a customer journey map with potential interactions based on customer personas that emulated the Plan’s population. Diving into the persona allowed us to explore what we know about key demographics, products purchased and interaction preferences. The depth and richness of this historic data can change over time, helping us understand where customers came from and predict where they might go next. Putting all of this together allows us to ‘know’ the persona and what to expect from this customer in their healthcare interactions. By combining the data analysis with an exploration of the journey map, personas and pain points, the team identified tangible solutions designed to deliver positive customer interactions.
Want to learn more about Customer Journey Mapping? Contact Jose Perdomo, NASCO’s Digital Product Owner, to take the next step in developing the best first impression for Plan customers.
