Patient Experience Starts with the Hiring Process

It’s 6:45 am on a Sunday morning and I’m sitting in an airport waiting on a Southwest Airlines flight to Chicago. The flight is running a little late, and bleary-eyed passengers bemoan the extra half hour of sleep they could have had. Meanwhile the Southwest gate agents, who look much too rested and energized for such an early hour, begin the lighthearted banter for which they are known. Pretty soon, the delayed passengers are laughing at their goofy repartee of corny jests and bad-rhythm rap. Once on board, the pilot apologized for the delay and joked that he’d just had a low-carb, high energy drink to help get us there in record time.

While some might see these gestures as silly, they are part of the airline’s legendary culture – one that turns customers into loyal followers. Southwest’s vigorous hiring process assures they have a better than average track record of selecting good-natured individuals that love to serve others but don’t take themselves too seriously. It makes for a great customer experience on an otherwise no-frills aircraft.

With all the talk about customer experience in health systems today, I wonder how many organizations have hard-wired their HR systems to weed out those applicants who just don’t have customer service in their DNA. Why try to train the surliness out of people that shouldn’t have been hired in the first place?

So many of our healthcare employees truly enjoy serving patients and customers, and do so admirably – often under trying circumstances. But those that don’t, hijack your brand – and break the covenant of trust between the brand and customer. That’s a marketing problem.

Top 10 in 2010: Ten Forces Framing Strategic Discussions for Healthcare Leaders

By any account, 2009 was a watershed year in which politics, the economy, public sentiment and the media all played a significant role in framing a new environment for health care over the next decade. With tumultuous challenge to the first significant overhaul of our nation’s health care system since the introduction of Medicare in the mid-1960s, health systems are still trying to determine the likely impact of payment reform initiatives on health system strategy. Here is a round-up of the most significant market forces that will shape strategic discussions over the next year, and most likely for the foreseeable future.

Top 10 in 2010: Ten Forces Framing Strategic Discussions for Healthcare Leaders

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Time-starved Consumers Seek ‘Brand Butlers’

The convergence of consumers with limited time and the ease of providing mobile online services is creating a new class of service-oriented “brand butlers,” according to consumer insights firm trendwatching.com. Trendwatching.com defines brand butlers as brands that focus on assisting consumers to make the most of their lives, as opposed to the traditional branding model of selling consumers a lifestyle or identity.

Although trendwatching.com identifies the growing sophistication of mobile online services as crucial to the development of brand butlers, the company advises that offline services such as permanent or pop-up branded spaces and lounges tied to a specific event (music festival) or location (airport) can qualify as brand butlers. Trendwatching.com also advises that brand butlers go above and beyond top-quality products and services, so providing excellent customer service is not enough on its own to become a brand butler.

Learn more about their 8 key brand butler categories at Time-starved Consumers Seek ‘Brand Butlers’

Brand Mastery to be Explored at Upcoming Innovator's Studio

The Chief Marketing Officers’ Innovator’s Studio convenes this week (November 9 & 10) in Chicago. This session’s deep dive topic – The New Brand Mastery – is significant and timely given the changing nature of the health industry. Increasing consolidation among providers, physician alignment and integration activities, emerging retail models, growing consumer expectations, new media channels, the new economics of health care reform – all play part in the complex dynamics shaping competition. And all have implications for health system brand strategies. On the agenda:

• A brand excursion to Whole Foods Market in Lincoln Park, led by Maggie Bahler, Regional Marketing Director and Executive Marketing Coordinator for Whole Foods. There we’ll learn how the retailer achieves company-wide alignment to its brand strategy while emphasizing local market connections (sound like a familiar challenge?).
• Jen Wagner-Mauk, Executive Director of Brand and Marketing for Affinity Health (Menasha, WI) and Megan Manahan, Vice President for Marketing and Communications with Mercy Health Partners (Toledo, OH) will share their journeys in repositioning their health system brands, including methods for creating brand alignment and commitment across their organizations.
• Mike Eaton, vice president of the brand and marketing consultancy for Navvis & Company (St. Louis, MO), and Rob Klein, president of Klein & Partners (Hinsdale, IL), will facilitate a Brand Mastery Workshop, where they will frame out an approach to creating a comprehensive, robust brand leadership method – and put everyone to work brainstorming, prioritizing and designing innovative approaches to meet the brand challenges of the changing competitive landscape in healthcare.
• Rob Klein will also share research results from a recent Omnibus survey. This consumer ‘kitchen sink’ study focused primarily on healthcare reform with selected other topics of interest.

You can follow session highlights on Twitter at #iscmo.

Guest Blogger: Rob Klein

Parking is Healthcare

Parking may not seem like it is related to healthcare; rather more a “retail” mentality. But parking is healthcare. Recently, while conducting focus groups for a hospital that is developing a new outpatient cancer facility, I asked cancer patients about their recent experiences using the existing facility (starting with parking). Apparently, physicians get the best spots on the first level and patients often have to circle up towards the top (and exposed) level.

Not too fun in the rain and snow, as one cancer patient put it. And another added that she wasn’t feeling well after chemo and forgot where she parked her car. Valet is so expensive, she commented. When she got to the parking deck she couldn’t find her car. Luckily a security guard in a golf cart picked her up. It took quite a while riding around every level clicking her electronic door opener on her keys before her car lights came on. She added, all I wanted to do was go home.

Another patient said to me that parking and walking to the facility takes so much time and he wasn’t sure how much of that he had left.

The point is while we may not look at parking as part of hospital quality, patients certainly do. For hospitals to evolve and grow they should take a page from both the retail and banking worlds. Remember when “bankers’ hours” was a negative phrase? Bankers’ hours no longer exist because banks finally embraced a more retail service model.

Parking can be a hassle when you’re healthy; just imagine looking for your car right after chemotherapy.

Rob

Rob Klein is president of Klein & Partners, a marketing research firm dedicated to keeping your brand healthy. Rob can be reached at 630.455.1773 or rob@kleinandpartners.com. Learn more at www.kleinandpartners.com.

How Do You Know When You Have a Brand?

At an Innovator’s Studio work session for Chief Marketing Officers, someone asked guest catalyst Kent Seltman (recently retired Mayo Clinic CMO) about the difference between a brand and a well-known name.

“You know you have a brand,” said Seltman, “when you can leverage it to gain something.” It’s a great insight, and poses a question that healthcare CMOs should stop to ponder: is your brand an asset that can be leveraged for competitive gain?

Many health systems have invested in brand building. Some have succeeded in creating stronger brand identity. A few have improved market position. Only a handful have fully realized the substantial, measurable advantage of a fully activated brand strategy:

• Strong brands influence consumer choice
• Strong brands attract and retain the best talent
• Strong brands create contracting, partnering leverage
• Strong brands shape referral patterns
• Strong brands build customer loyalty
• Strong brands better weather economic cycles

On his blog, author Seth Godin described a marketing asset as a “tool or platform, something you can use over and over without using it up. In fact, it’s something that gets better the more you invest. Running an ad is an expense. Building a brand people trust is an asset.”

Godin goes on to explain that Amazon’s marketing assets are two: “a brand people trust, and a one-click shopping relationship with 50 million people.” Can you boil down the essential elements of your brand’s competitive strengths in such a distinct fashion?

The charge to CMOs is an unwavering focus on driving growth – a great brand provides powerful leverage to do so.

Building the Case for Brand Alignment

“The New Brand Mastery: Integrated Business, Brand and Marketing Strategies to Drive Growth” is the topic title for a session that Joel English of BVK, Rob Klein of Klein & Partners, and I will be presenting at this year’s annual SHSMD conference (Orlando, Florida; September 30 - October 3, 2009). Our premise is three-fold:

1. First, the central and foundational asset in competitive strategy is an organization’s brand and the leverage it provides to drive growth, profitability and customer loyalty


2. Second, organizational misalignment – across operational, clinical, business development and marketing functions – is the primary cause of brand under-performance and wastes marketing dollars


3. Conversely, brand alignment results in a powerful, relevant and differentiated brand-driven culture by transforming an organization from one that simply ‘promotes a brand’ to one that ‘delivers the brand.’

During the session, we’ll provide a multi-dimensional exploration of brand as an essential business strategy for healthcare organizations, present a framework for developing, activating, growing and protecting the brand as a strategy-critical asset, and illustrate return on investment in terms of volume, revenue and market performance.

Our session is scheduled for Friday, October 2, 2009 from 10:15 to 11:30 am. To learn more about this year’s SHSMD Conference and download a schedule of events, click here: SHSMD 2009 Conference.

I hope to see you there – stop by to say ‘hello’ at The Strategy Group booth in the exhibition hall.

'Energized Differentiation' Separates Great Brands from the Pack

A recent article published in Strategy + Business (The Trouble with Brands) summarizes findings from a massive study of consumer brand perceptions and the impact on corporate performance. The comprehensive examination revealed that consumers are increasingly focusing their loyalties and purchasing power on an ever-narrowing set of brands that are connecting to the public in more exciting and dynamic ways.

This brand phenomenon – coined ‘energized differentiation’ – is personified in high energy brands such as iPhone, Nike, Walmart, Whole Foods, Zappos and Axe, among others.

According to the authors, three primary factors separate high energy brands from the so-so lot:

• Vision – how the company’s aspirations, reputation and values are presented to consumers
• Innovation – how consumers perceive innovative design or function or content
• Dynamism – how the brand persona evokes emotion and engagement

A critical finding of the study was the link between energized differentiation and financial earnings and stock performance. “The more energy they have, the greater consideration, loyalty, pricing power, and brand value (as a percentage of firm value) they command.” (Gerzema, Lebar)

In other words, the more energized the brand, the greater the preference and usage – and the more predictive of brand-driven growth.

The article is worth the read (click here), and will make a good journal topic for your next marketing team meeting.

Karen

Have We Banned Brand Discussions from the C-Suite?

Recently a colleague asked my opinion on educational topics for healthcare executives focused on physician integration and alignment. We talked over the usual suspects - varied alignment models, integration frameworks, physician governance and leadership, transaction issues. culture - to which she asked, 'these are all important, but what isn't yet being talked about when it comes to the integration of health systems and physicians?"

"Brand," I replied. "No one is talking about the brand impact of large-scale physician integration strategies."

"Oh," she said, "but these are executives, not marketers. They're not really interested in brand."

(sigh)

Just imagine this conversation if we were discussing Apple, Proctor and Gamble, Starbucks. Can you see Steve Jobs dismissing brand as an issue central to a company acquisition? Howard Shultz declaring that brand is the lone responsibility of the marketing department?

The problems lies not in whether the C-suite is interested in brand, but whether it understands and embraces brand as central to creating customer value. When the first brand question raised is "what do we call the new physician enterprise?" rather than "what competitively unique, relevant brand value proposition will this combination bring to market to grow our business in new and exciting ways" then it's clear that brand is still seen as a communications tool rather than an asset to be leveraged for market gains.

Branding is a management perspective -- the totality of activities to define, shape and deliver customer perceived value. Are we to leave this to chance after spending millions to effect physician transactions?

In an earlier post (Keeping Your Brand Healthy After Physician Integration) I stated, "Assuming the average primary care physician sees about 5,000 patients visits a year, back of the napkin math shows us that a health system with 100 employed physicians brings in a half million visits or so annually – with 300 to 400 physicians that number can rise upwards of 2 million. Now assuming that brand impressions are shaped through familiarity and frequency of use, then it’s easy to see how a large employed physician practice can be the catalyst for building – or unraveling – brand reputation."

Brands drive customer perceptions. Customer perceptions drive business outcomes. This isn't a topic of interest for the C-suite?

Karen

Closing the Brand Equity Gap of Investment and Realized Return

Over the past couple of decades, health systems have made substantial investments in brand building. Many have succeeded in creating stronger brand awareness. Some have improved market position. Only a few, however, have fully realized the substantial, measurable advantage of a fully activated brand strategy.

What these brands leaders have discovered is that:

• Strong brands influence consumer choice
• Strong brands attract and retain the best talent
• Strong brands create contracting, partnering leverage
• Strong brands shape referral patterns
• Strong brands build customer loyalty
• Strong brands better weather economic cycles

The gap between investments in a brand and realized return cannot be closed with brand advertising alone; nor, can it be resolved by customer service, clinical quality, lean operations and other initiatives pursued in isolation of a comprehensive, integrated approach to better leverage the outcomes for market advantage. Greater share. Increased volumes. Better profitability. Customer loyalty.

The only way to narrow the brand equity gap is to effect strategic, operational, clinical, physician and marketing alignment to create and deliver a meaningful, differentiating and durable brand value proposition. Brand alignment builds the brand-driven culture that transforms an organization from one that simply ‘promotes a brand’ to one that ‘delivers the brand.’

Karen Corrigan

Keeping Your Brand Healthy After Physician Integration: Part II

Health systems that ignore the implications of physician integration to the organization’s brand do so at their own peril. Hundreds of doctors in an employed physician structure can produce hundreds of thousands of patient visits in a year – each visit shaping and reinforcing the organization’s brand reputation.

Without an explicit strategy for creating and delivering a brand-defined experience in physician practices, health systems run the risk of developing a brand reputation they don’t want – formed from inconsistency of service, customer indifference, fragmented care, complex processes, poor medical care.

But it doesn’t have to be that way. The key question for health care executives is how to leverage investments in physician integration to increase total brand equity – to build a powerful, differentiated brand presence and to drive growth from a core positioning platform.

To do so, we must first understand brand as a central and foundational underpinning of competitive strategy. Brands are potent business-building assets for driving growth, engaging customers, building profitability. As you develop and evolve the integrated physician structure, key issues regarding brand and business building strategies should be addressed from the beginning.

So how can a health system turn a potential brand liability into an advantage?

• Determine your unique brand value proposition. How you plan to create and deliver value to current and prospective customers through the fully integrated physician practice is fundamental to long term success. What significant customer-centered benefits (more timely appointments, better coordinated care, personalized service, best in class physician talent, etc.) will your patients gain as a result of the integration strategy?
• Agree on brand identity. Names may be about egos, but brands are about business. The right brand identity should, first and foremost, ease the selection process for your customers. Brand identity for the physician group should be chosen in the context of the health system’s strategic positioning and growth goals, as well as its overall brand building strategy.
• Create brand alignment across operating, clinical and marketing systems, and build a discipline to channel investments into those things that matter most.
• Hardwire customer service, operating and patient care processes to ‘deliver’ on the brand. Patient experience is born through brand activation, a process whereby the brand value proposition is translated and transformed into actionable principles, features, service standards and behaviors. Remember that brand reputation is built primarily through customer experience.
• Enhance brand performance. Establish and monitor key metrics regarding growth, revenue, profitability, brand awareness, brand preference, customer advocacy and staff engagement. Identify growth opportunities in key segments, markets, channels. Address barriers that may limit the power of your brand to move market share.

The mantra for health systems seeking leverage from their physician integration investments is simple. Build the brand. Build the business.

Keeping Your Brand Healthy After Physician Integration: Part I

The rapid restructuring of the physician services sector and resulting physician alignment, integration and employment models are presenting new brand building challenges for health systems, hospitals and physician organizations. Assuming the average primary care physician sees about 5,000 patients visits a year, back of the napkin math shows us that a health system with 100 employed physicians brings in a half million visits or so annually – with 300 to 400 physicians that number can rise upwards of 2 million. Now assuming that brand impressions are shaped through familiarity and frequency of use, then it’s easy to see how a large employed physician practice can be the catalyst for building – or unraveling – brand reputation.

You see, what we’re still learning in healthcare is that brand is built more powerfully through the customer experience than through promotions. The most creative imagery and well-crafted messages of killer advertising will not survive poor or inconsistent customer service – physician offices that don’t return patient calls, or don’t answer calls over the lunch hour when it’s most convenient for patients to make them, or can’t make timely appointments or see patients on time, or the poorly trained and groomed front desk staff, or the torn upholstery of the waiting room chairs, or the rushed appointment, or the doctor or nurse that enters the exam room, eyes on the chart and not on the patient. Or even worse – the missed diagnosis, the wrong medication, the preventable error.

The significance and potential impact of these everyday irritants and sometimes serious missteps cannot be underestimated once aggregated under the brand umbrella of a large health system. Every physician practice is now a branded access point, perhaps even the most critical of those touch points capable of enhancing or destroying brand reputation.

Brands are about business – growth, customer loyalty, profitability. It just doesn’t make good business sense investing millions to effect a large scale physician integration strategy if only to lose that and more by not purposefully addressing how brand equity will be preserved and enhanced.

So how can brand be unleashed to drive growth and innovation for the health system-physician enterprise? Well, that’s Part II – coming soon.

Karen Corrigan