Customer experience matters the most for business growth in any industry. Likewise, in healthcare too, the customer is at the core of all business operations. The healthcare industry is growing rapidly and becoming customer centric. Today’s healthcare customers/patients want constant support and a better customer service experience consistently.
The Evolving Importance of Customer Service in Healthcare
Patient needs are changing in recent times. They are looking for more than just medical care and treatment for their health conditions. They expect value through well-informed advisory, personal and focused attention. Customer service in healthcare is therefore making it to the top of the priority list for all healthcare providers.
A PWC study shows 49% of healthcare providers agree that healthcare customer experience is emerging as one of the top priorities.
Healthcare providers have realized that to enhance patient experience and stay ahead in the highly competitive healthcare market, they need the right tools and technology to drive their customer service strategies. Leveraging innovation-led, advanced customer service management (CSM) platforms to improve the overall performance of service delivery and reduce costs is the need of the hour. And one such platform is ServiceNow CSM, transforming the healthcare industry through enhanced customer journeys.
The 5 Key Pillars of Customer Service in Healthcare
Common Challenges Faced by Healthcare Providers in Delivering Superior Customer Experience
Healthcare organizations that have still been using legacy customer service delivery models are struggling to adapt to changing times and evolving customer expectations. In the absence of advanced tools and technologies, some of the roadblocks that impede the ability of the healthcare system to deliver a good customer service experience include –
1. Overburdened Health System
When there is an increased burden on the healthcare system, attending to customers manually can become a tedious task, with long wait times leaving them unhappy and irate. The situation can be really frustrating for both the provider and the patient, especially when the patient is battling a serious condition that needs immediate attention. With modern technology powered CSM platforms, such situations can be handled far more efficiently.
2. Increased Patient Awareness
With patients becoming more aware of their medical conditions and diagnoses, there are increased instances of them arguing with the healthcare staff because they are not satisfied with care delivery. They may often think that they aren’t being treated as expected, or that physicians are downplaying their conditions, and this inevitably leads to a bad customer experience.
3. Patients’ Perceptions
Presently, healthcare consumers see the system as something focused on revenue rather than patient care, and this needs to change for the greater good. The rapidly emerging value-based care model focuses on health outcomes rather than revenues and is a step in the right direction, making way for customer service automation.
Healthcare organizations using traditional systems and conventional methodologies are under fire for not being able to match up to what patients consider a great healthcare customer experience.
A modern CSM platform can help healthcare organizations win back the trust and the confidence of their patients.
The Solution - A Modern, Technology-powered CSM Platform
For a holistic and positive customer service experience, healthcare customers need a centralized system where they can get a quick and efficient solution for their problems with minimal effort from their end, rather than having to go through multiple channels and waiting for hours before finally seeing a physician to get a resolution.
This is where a CSM platform comes into the picture, allowing healthcare providers to automate requests, proactively address issues, and deliver effortless customer experiences. Customer service automation helps overcome the common service delivery challenges, improving healthcare accessibility and minimizing tedious processes for an enhanced customer experience. Here are the 4 key benefits of using a CSM platform in Healthcare.
Benefits of Using a CSM Platform in Healthcare
1. Enhanced Customer Relationships
Although there have been major developments in virtual patient care and treatment, patients value one-on-one interaction with their practitioners over anything else. To build a robust customer relationship with patients, enabling sufficient face to face interaction with physicians and an uninterrupted access to all other medical services is vital. With the help of CSM platforms, healthcare providers can ensure that patients stay connected to physicians whenever they feel the need to.
2. Increased Service Efficiency
A CSM system helps healthcare facilities manage their patient appointments far more efficiently. Patients can get quick access to their physicians without having to go through tedious processes. This service efficiency improves the overall patient experience and ensures clinical and operational maturity through enhanced patient satisfaction.
3. Well-aligned Services
By leveraging CSM platforms, healthcare providers can identify areas of improvement in their management systems and fix those. This way they can improve their services and cater to patient needs more efficiently.
4. Automated Processes
With the help of a CSM platform, customer service management processes can be automated, reducing the burden of dealing with thousands of patients manually every day. Automating processes minimizes the scope for human errors in scheduling appointments or patient communication, thereby enhancing patient experience greatly.
What Should You Be Looking for in your CSM?
Your CSM platform should be able to connect your teams more efficiently to boost efficiency, enable you to proactively address patient issues by streamlining processes and scale self-service. A good CSM platform unites customer engagement with customer operations to enable faster resolutions and more proactive customer service through a single platform.
ServiceNow CSM is the best contender in the market if you’re looking for CSM maturity.
Why ServiceNow CSM?
- The ServiceNow® CSM platform improves operational efficiency and customer engagement by automating workflows.
- It streamlines customer operations by breaking down silos and making it easier for all departments to interact with each other seamlessly and work in tandem with each other. ServiceNow connects and optimizes teams.
- Customer service sees fewer cases as a result of the workflow automation, and self-help features from ServiceNow.
- Most importantly, with ServiceNow CSM, agents can address issues much faster while raising customer satisfaction scores.
The Road Ahead
In a recent survey by KPMG, it has been evaluated that, next to product quality and value, high-quality service is the most important factor in ensuring that customers become dedicated brand evangelists. Customer satisfaction is the key to the success of a healthcare organization and ease of communication is vital for enhancing customer experience in healthcare. By empowering patients with personalized, automated self-service options, healthcare providers can offer a consistent customer experience across every interaction. And for that, healthcare providers need a customer service management (CSM) platform like ServiceNow CSM.
ServiceNow CSM helps healthcare organizations, big or small, in serving their patients efficiently and enhancing the overall customer experience.
KANINI, a ServiceNow Premier Partner and a Managed Services Provider (MSP), helps healthcare organizations build comprehensive and structured customer service processes with ServiceNow CSM. Reach out to us to know more about our ServiceNow implementation services.
Author
Joshua Smith
Joshua is a process improvement thought leader and digital transformation expert at KANINI. Over the past 15 years, his focus has always been on achieving organizational maturity and enhancing business processes through implementing tools and workflows to drive transformation initiatives. With experience in multiple verticals from – manufacturing to healthcare, Joshua brings a practitioner’s perspective when working on business solutions and goals to allow him to advise and guide on industry and process best practices.
