Health Care Companies With the Best Prognosis Put Customers First

From the minute we wake in the morning, with details of sleep quality at our fingertips thanks to wellness-tracking wearables, and throughout the day, when videoconferencing appointments might include a virtual doctor visit, it’s clear that health care has become as on-demand as ordering dinner or streaming a favorite show.

Although our view of medicine derives from the authority and specialized training of providers, it’s also clear that consumers like being in the driver’s seat when it comes to their health.

According to the 2022 Customer Centricity Index—a data-driven collaboration between Salesforce and Bloomberg Media Studios to identify brands that excel at putting customers first—modern consumers evaluate health care providers much as they do retail or consumer tech companies.

That means health provider customer-experience upgrades are showing return on investment, according to Tiffani Bova, Global Customer Growth and Innovation Evangelist at Salesforce, who monitors market trends to uncover best practices in enhancing customer experience. She points to equivalencies that the Customer Centricity Index draws between medicine and e-commerce—in relevancy of products and services, anticipation of customer needs and ease of doing business—as evidence that patients increasingly bring their consumer mindset to the doctor’s office.

Bova cites the rise of telemedicine and self-service appointment-scheduling apps as examples of consumer technology devices becoming portals for frictionless access to providers. Similarly, where health care intersects with retail, as when filling doctor prescriptions for medicines and medical devices, the buying experience increasingly replicates the ease of online shopping.

But Bova says there’s more to the story than health care providers taking advantage of user-friendly tech tools road-tested by other industries.

“There’s an ongoing movement in health care to view patients as consumers—and what modern consumers expect is easy digital access to the brands they do business with,” says Bova. “What’s important to understand is that this approach doesn’t compromise the quality of care. In fact, it stands to reason that the easier time that patients have with booking and billing, the more likely they are to stay on top of their medical needs, resulting in better outcomes.

“Health care is a highly regulated industry, which can be a barrier to creating a seamless cross-functional experience where your hospital is connected to an outside specialist who’s also connected to your primary-care doctor,” Bova says. “But if you’re talking about within a single facility, we have seen the patients’ experience exponentially improve because of the capabilities and digital tools of the care staff.” She cites the benefits to both patients and providers when doctors and nurses use smart tablets that enhance information access at their fingertips, providing a concierge-like patient experience.

Bova adds that a CRM tool like Salesforce Health Cloud equips providers to form a 360-degree view of patients—a tech-assisted holistic perspective that patients can feel and appreciate. Salesforce’s 2022 State of the Connected Customer report found that patients who trust their providers the most are twice as likely to have been asked about their needs beyond medical services.

Making the virtual feel personal

Along with the Customer Centricity Index, the State of the Connected Customer report is a snapshot of pandemic-influenced consumer behaviors that appear likely to become permanent; on the health care front, chief among them is the video appointment as an acceptable substitute for an in-person doctor visit. Forty-two percent of the report’s survey respondents have relied on video appointments for care, and 91% see a future where this becomes a routine way of seeing a doctor.

The growing comfort level with virtual care is reflected in revenue and market-share projections for the industry. Bloomberg Intelligence analysts predict that the virtual-care category will reach $20 billion in revenue by 2027, when 15% of all doctor visits could become virtual.

Mental health that blends empathy and analytics

Health care’s growing reliance on digital tools runs parallel to another significant trend: an increasing embrace of mental health as a stigma-free part of a patient’s holistic wellness needs.

Founded in 2016, the mental-health services company Spring Health operates from two playbooks at once: the classic care-oriented ethos of medicine, as well as the performance-oriented mindset common to the tech industry.

“We leverage metrics, machine learning and our proprietary algorithm to match members with the treatment plans that can help them feel better the fastest,” says Millard Brown, Spring Health’s Senior Vice President for Medical Affairs.

This might sound like the type of automatic back-end number-crunching that determines everything from the shows recommended by our streaming services to which products show up in our social feeds. But Brown says that the clinically developed processes yield results.

He credits Spring Health’s data-driven process for boosting the company’s net promoter score (NPS)—an industry metric of customer satisfaction—to 79, out-performing the average health care NPS of 58. He adds that 70% of people treated by an employer-sponsored mental health plan through Spring Health clinically improve—also better than industry average.

Dr. Adam Chekroud, Spring Health’s cofounder and President, is focused on meaningfully delivering mental-health therapies through a computer, tablet or smartphone screen.

“The great thing about virtual care is that it allows employees to not only look for a provider within a few miles of home, but also for anyone licensed in their state,” he says, pointing out that this multiplies patient options, especially for those seeking a provider who shares their lived experience and will understand them better.

Today’s expectation of immediate, on-demand availability is transforming sectors from food delivery to media consumption, and mental-health services are no different. Spring Health boasts an 89% rate of providers who offer services at nearly any hour of the day—not just traditional business hours.

Why every brand needs a digital bedside manner moving forward

“Whether a company’s business model relies on patients or a traditional view of the consumer, expectations around carefully designed digital experiences are only going to intensify in the coming generational shifts,” says Bova.

According to Salesforce’s State of the Connected Customer report, 49% of baby boomers—who didn’t grow up with ready access to personal digital technology—prefer the speed and seamlessness of digital self-service when dealing with brands, and for millennials, that preference jumps to 66%. It stands to reason that for Gen-Z and beyond, the ease of digital, even in personal matters like health, is not a “new normal,” but the baseline norm.

“Whether it’s a caregiver, like a health care provider, or the brand we trust to ship us the right pair of shoes, what the future holds is increasingly digital, on-demand interactions with companies,” Bova says. “The providers that are going to earn loyalty are the ones that make those interactions feel as satisfying as dealing with a helpful, knowledgeable human, and as seamless as a tap-to-pay transaction.”