Understanding Through the Lens of Your Consumer
Society is aging as our seniors live longer. While some may be pursuing better opportunities in their life, others are coping with increased frailty. They are adamant about the choice of life and care they want as they get older. So, it’s important that aged care providers rethink what senior care is, and how they can anticipate and stay up-to-date on what the consumers want.
In a market filled with options, consumers rely on their previous experiences and interactions with different care service providers to form an opinion, and ultimately, a decision in terms of which service providers are more likely to meet their care needs.
Consumer expectations are changing. This means that aged care providers will need to re-evaluate and re-assess how they tailor and adapt consumer journeys to meet consumers where they are and match their care needs and preferences.
Experience and service matter for consumers in the decision-making process. A great consumer experience (CX) is not created in a vacuum and requires sustained efforts on the providers’ part. Understanding your consumers and their characteristics, knowing or be able to anticipate what they need and prefer, when they need it, how they will like it served to them–that is going to have a powerful impact on the experience.
How do we do that? Capture each consumer journey, operationalize every step of it, and have it tightly integrated with your CRM platform.
Mapping Your Consumers’ Journey to Better Support Them
Although every service provider would like to think that they know what their customers need, want and what their expectations are, perception differences between their vision and the consumers’ vision will always appear.
As an aged care service provider, you shouldn’t underestimate any interaction with your consumers, including the care recipients, their family members, and the caregivers. From the first interaction, whether it is through emails, phone calls, or a face-to-face conversation, consumers are forming an opinion whether you qualify as an option worth considering.
Before mapping your consumers’ journey, there are a few things you need to think about:
- First, have a clear picture of whose journey you are mapping. In the journey of learning more about aged care, searching for the best option, and receiving care and support, there is more than just the care recipient’s journey you will need to take care of. This also includes the care recipient’s family, their loved ones, and how you can support them in their different experiences.
- Second, have in mind if the journey would entail the entire consumer lifecycle or a specific segment of the relationship, a specific contact, or a cluster of related contacts. Only afterward you can tie activities, workflows, and processes together to offer consumers a seamless care experience.
- Also, try to remember that the care recipient and their family members’ journey is be underpinned by their own life experience, background, social, economic, and cultural influences. Each experience is unique, and it is in the hands of the service to use technology effectively to complement their caregiving and service delivery.
Optimizing Customer Journey Shouldn’t Be a Luxury
Having a well-mapped-out consumer journey is essential. It helps increase process efficiency by allowing care professionals to focus on the consumer’s needs at all times and keeps the consumer’s perspective at the forefront of their thinking. It also helps the care team across the board to understand what needs to happen at each step of the consumer journey.
Optimizing customers’ care journey can greatly increase the opportunity to ensure that the needs and expectations of care recipients and their families are consistently taken care of. Besides, it also allows your team to constantly improve and upgrade services, based on it.
