Healthcare consumers are more empowered than ever to choose according to their perceptions, and they know it. As health plans get more flexible in letting people pick providers – and online platforms enable word-of-mouth to cover more ground at faster speeds – the competition to be anyone’s provider of choice is fierce.

Which brings me to the importance of patient touch points—those many opportunities for healthcare providers to ‘live their brand’ by enhancing patient experiences. Every interaction counts, whether direct or indirect, clinical or non-clinical.

In a sea of how-to’s and must-do’s surrounding social media and health information technology, it’s important to keep more conventional methods in our strategies as well. With today’s patients empowered to think and act like retail consumers, providers are wise to take pages from consumer-oriented business models to elevate service levels and deliver fully satisfying experiences at the point of care. Think Disney, Zappos and Nordstrom.

Here are three great places to start:

• Personalize Care. People love it when they feel camaraderie with their care team, and they respond with loyalty when they believe you know them as individuals. Introduce yourself, call patients by name and look them in the eye. Also, be mindful that your presence in the community is making impressions on people even before they become your patients, so find ways to customize every encounter.
• Be Responsive. It goes without saying that patients are happier when healthcare providers eliminate wait times. Go beyond the obvious. Ask patients about their expectations and respond to their personal needs. Unanticipated opportunities to show extraordinary service go a long way toward improving the patient experience.
• Keep Patients Informed. Whether it’s about medications or when the doctors are likely to make their rounds, keep patients informed. Explain tests, treatments and procedures; describe the technology you use. Include patients (and if appropriate, their families) in decision-making.

At Dobies Healthcare Group, we encourage healthcare marketers to champion the notion that brand is what you do. It is not a logo or tagline—a brand is something that lives in people’s hearts and minds. It’s defined by expectations developed over time through your communications and more importantly, your actions.

In other words, when you make a brand promise related to patient experience, you need to know you can keep it. You also need to continually strengthen the promise by identifying and translating consumer expectations into touch points that matter most to patients.

We’ve been talking a lot about brands lately, so I thought I’d weigh in.  This weekend I ventured out to the suburbs to find some sport wear for an upcoming trip to Colorado (I’m headed to Beaver Creek to bond with my Vistage group and join in some ziplining across canyons and white water rafting — perhaps I’ll share my adventure on my next blog). Even though it’s not a high adventure retreat, I needed a couple of things to round out my wardrobe. Heels don’t work so well on the trail, you know.  Anyway, I went to a well-known adventure sports store that I’ve gone to since it was located in midtown. Although I had been to their posh new digs once before, this time, I found myself rebelling against the new store. Their modern retail surroundings and retail focus trumped the staff’s passion for adventure that had once drawn me there.  

So, I drove two blocks to Dynamic Earth. A place where the staff put their heart into serving customers. They really get into helping you excel at your next adventure. The staff at Dynamic Earth focus less on the label and more about how your wearing the right thing will help you perform against the roar of the river, the heat of the sun, the torrential rains above tree line. Ok, I know what you’re thinking – this retreat doesn’t sound like those kind of  “adventures.”  It doesn’t matter — it wasn’t just about the clothes. I left with new information on whitewater kayaking clinics on the Mulberry River (something I’d been looking for), inspiration to get my kayak back in the water, and a deeper conviction that brand is about what you DO, not merely what the marketers write and create at the point of purchase. Great customer service and mission-passionate staff go a long way toward establishing strong brands.