2018 Healthcare Marketing Trend #1: Customer Experience

A blog series giving you an inside look at our top three hospital marketing trends for 2018. Here’s our first trend!

Gartner, a research and advisory company predicts that by 2018, more than 50 percent of organizations will focus their efforts on improving the customer experience”. Hospitals and health systems are following suit because they know that a happy patient means higher probability. The better they get, the bigger chunk of reimbursements they get from Medicare and Medicaid.

How do you go about improving the customer experience at your organization?

There’s a number of ways, but most of your efforts will focus on the internal attitude of your hospital or health system. For example, you’re going to want to develop a strong culture that is headed by the leadership team, to help trickle down core values to employees. Accessibility is also important. You don’t want your patients to feel abandoned or think that they’re just a number. Train your staff to take on a more patient-centric approach to care and give patients more time, even if it’s just to chat with them or to share a cup of coffee. It’s the little things that make a big difference.

If you’re not sure how patient’s feel about their experiences at your hospital, use social media and review sites to spot patterns and pain points. Yelp, Healthgrades, Facebook and Twitter are all great places to start. Social media accounts also make it easier for you to provide customer service. Which, according to Wordstream, “59% of Americans with social media accounts think that customer service through social media has made it easier to get questions answered and issues resolved.”

To find out more about our emerging trends, download our “2018 Healthcare Marketing Trends Playbook” here!