Broken: Healthcare Customer Experience and a Bridge in Philly

On June 11th, a major portion of I95 collapsed in Philadelphia due to a fuel truck explosion. Sadly, that driver of the truck died in the accident.

This bridge is 30 miles from me and the ripple of this broken corridor was felt immediately across the region and the country. You cannot get from Boston to DC or anywhere in between efficiently without crossing this overpass.

The headlines that emerged looked like excerpts from the click-bait hall of shame.

Philly, a city reeling from a series of near misses in the ‘championships’ category in recent years, did not need another black eye.

But, this is the town that gave us Rocky, Dick Clark’s American Bandstand, the nation’s flag, the Declaration of Independence, and the late Kobe Bryant.

So, it was no surprise that what unfolded next was unheard of, unexpected – even hyperbolic. Political leaders from the city, state and US government said the bridge would be replaced with a temporary structure in 14 days.

The innately skeptical scoffs quickly rose to a clamor as the region’s collective BS detectors sounded.

This same span of highway has been under some form of construction for decades.

Balboa Like Tenacity

Then, the purpose, plan and precision began. In TWELVE days, two days ahead of the already unbelievable, the road reopened to traffic.

You could hear “Gonna Fly Now” and feel the triumph of Rocky climbing the steps of the iconic Philadelphia Art Museum. Against all odds, the underdog emerged victorious. They DID IT. And that my friends is the catch . . .

You see, once you reset the bar for what is possible, there is no turning back. The ‘risk of doing the right thing’ feels a bit oxymoronic as a notion because now that you have shown the world you CAN, you are out of excuses for why you DON’T. 

Twelve days is the bar. It is exceptional, but in a world where amazing is the new price of entry, people are now expecting Eleven.

The cost of not fixing things fast far outweighed the reliance on the old ways, habits, and traditions of inefficiency.  It is a similar feeling you get when your enterprise XM (Experience Management) begins to reveal your new capabilities to understand and fix customer and colleague problems and connect them to value.

Broken Experiences

I get it, a bridge is an obvious maybe even a tired metaphor. We are always talking about building bridges in every industry - especially healthcare. But, we do not talk enough about the predictable weak spots, compounding systemic connections, or even sudden catastrophes. We do not talk enough about resetting the bars of possibilities to enrich the lives of patients and professionals by asking, observing and systematically and relentlessly resolving the barriers between people and their medications and care.

Bridges break daily between brands and customers and in healthcare they can be as personally devastating and distressing as the collapse of a major thoroughfare. Even small breaks add up to big problems leaving you and the people essential to your company’s reputation and growth on opposite sides of a divide. They reveal moments of empathy ignored, bureaucracy's victories over the virtuous, and the gravitational forces of habits.

The realities in life sciences are everywhere. Imagine a large institutional buyer who have experienced small faults in the construct of your relationship. Over time, unknown missteps with field sales, essential services, slow and no resolution in the contact center, product flaws, messaging that misses the mark, supply issues, breakdowns in digital self-serve, omni-channel overload  . . . all compound into a potential chasm in the relationship. What builds gradually beneath the service - discoverable, but disconnected - can sometimes manifest abruptly and the business, seemingly suddenly, transfers to competitor who simply listens and responds better.

But it wasn't sudden. These signals of compounding and individual flaws have been detectable and actionable in such relationship for some time. Detractors become louder and linked over time and if your competitor is magical where you are missing and science (efficacy and safety evidence) is on everyone’s side, your product's safety and efficacy are the cost of entry and experience becomes a deciding factor.

All the King’s Horses 

It turns out we can keep Humpty Dumpty on the wall by detecting instability early and pinpointing it. I am over simplifying to an extent, but these are essential aspects of successful XM:

• a clear vision and shared intention
• organizational alignment around the value of system-wide resolution of observed and solicited feedback
• attention to the customer chemistry revealed in the amalgamation of x-data and o-data
• leadership's involvement and commitment to true customer centricity
• clear governance and operational enablement
• empowerment of the frontlines
• a purposeful technology approach

Combined, these can prevent great falls. Even when breaks do happen - when we know, and care, and act - we have a much better chance of putting things back together again.

If the company and its customers are the kingdom and the kingdom is facing threats, you best get busier on solutions than on excuses.

Over Troubled Waters

As an industry, healthcare is lagging when it comes to XM excellence and the life sciences industry within is bringing up the rear when compared to health systems. There are pockets of excellence and no shortage of desire to deliver and I welcome any challenges. But it is undeniable, we have work to do and it is important work and a beautiful problem to solve as an industry.

If we pause and think about the paths made by humans over thousands of years - they intuitively aimed to make the course to a destination shorter, smoother, with minimal barriers. Why then are the experiences in healthcare, the moments when our body's and minds fail us, so fraught with friction? Perhaps the more poetic question is, "what if treated the experience as if were an essential aspect of treatment - as important as medication, sutures, diagnostics, and the skilled hearts and hands of providers?".

To understand the experiences broken, needed and valued we must listen and observe systematically. Solicited feedback is important - that is fact, but it cannot be the sole or dominant source of insights. Customers are broadcasting signals in social, digital behaviors, prior actions, call centers, interactions in the context of your brand and business. All of this validates that customers are unpredictable - but in very predictable ways.

Treating Experience as a Medicine, what I call EaaM, may well be a sturdy bridge over troubled water.

Such bridges connect and unite us around goodness. They help us heal and find our way forward together. They are good for the soul and good for personal and business growth. Consider that a few short days after the fiery collapse Philadelphia sports teams, the Flyers, Eagles, Phillies, 76ers and Union, made a collective $50,000 donation to build a trust for the daughter of Nathan Moody, the driver who died in the collapse on June 11.

That act is part of the deeper repairs enabled by the experience's empathy engine that produces possibilities.

Let's commit to resetting the bar for what is possible.