Who are you leaving behind with your omnichannel approach?
An omnichannel approach — in any industry — looks at how to integrate every channel and touchpoint your customers/members have with your product or service and makes sure that experience is consistent, seamless, and frictionless. It doesn’t look at those channels as separate entities with separate experiences but instead finds a way to integrate them all, offering a holistic experience that is seemingly effortless from the perspective of your members/customers.
When done right, with the help of Service Design, an omnichannel approach focuses on the integration of data and technology, content and communication while coordinating the needs and desires of your members/customers by meeting them where they are. And this is an important distinction to make. Meeting your members/customers where they are is the single most important thing in an omnichannel approach, as opposed to pushing information to them from where you are.
Considering an omnichannel approach, however, can be daunting, when you think about the work it can take to operationalize, especially if you currently don’t have the infrastructure and data integration in place to meet your customers/members’ needs.
Service Design allows us to take the holistic perspective an omnichannel experience requires, assessing the entire landscape, uncovering gaps in your member experience and considering solutions with a focus on an integrated experience. An integrated experience doesn’t mean creating an ideal scenario that will take your organization years to accomplish. It means understanding the landscape you are in. Figuring out what is changeable in the short term and what will take longer. It also doesn’t mean pushing a business agenda that heavily leans into one channel without considering the needs of members seeking less than ideal channels to communicate with you.
In healthcare, for example, you not only have to meet members where they are, you have to make up for the existing deficits of the systems that are currently in place. Legacy systems, regulations, policy restrictions and HIPAA compliance, come to mind when considering healthcare. There are a lot of systemic and structural hurdles that can’t always be overcome but that doesn’t mean there aren’t options to circumvent or minimize the friction points.
And while access to data is often not an issue within healthcare, the integration of that data with other systems is. Not only that, but data alone doesn’t give us context. Knowing that 20% of your members reach out to your call center is good but do you know why? Are they calling because they are traveling and need healthcare abroad and thought it was easier to call the customer service number at the back of the card? That person may likely be a digital power user but in this context found that calling was the right choice. Could they be calling because they’re looking for basic information but can’t locate it on your website? Or, is it be possible they don’t have broadband access and need to use a land line?
For many organizations, digital is considered the singular way forward to an omni channel approach because it allows them to cut costs elsewhere. (i.e., reduce customer service calls by improving digital experiences that can offer the same info). However, pushing a digital agenda by not understanding your members/customers preferences will not get you the engagement you’re looking for. In a worst case scenario, you may be leaving some of your members out entirely.
The COVID-19 pandemic showed us how digital has the capacity to connect us in many ways, making healthcare easier for some but it further revealed the inequities and fractures that exist in our society. In healthcare specifically, even in this “digital age”, it exposed how lack of broadband limits people’s access to care and how over time this can have compounding negative effects to their quality of life. To that point, the FCC (Federal Communications Commission) has an established task force that’s been doing research that points to lack of broadband access as a social determinant of health. According to the Pew Research Center, despite growth post COVID, there are still digital divides between rural, urban and suburban America.
An omnichannel experience is meant to meet members where they are by integrating every channel and touchpoint — that members use. You have to meet your members where they are first before you can motivate them on the benefits of doing somethings else. (My Behavior Change colleagues would have a lot to say about that.) And you have to accept that some people will always call no matter how much you’d like them to use a different medium. Which goes back to my earlier point. It’s not about you. It’s about them.
There are times I have been witness to organizations’ business objectives going against members’ needs. Who are you leaving out if your quarterly goals don’t match up with what members want, however? And what is the cost of leaving any of your members behind?
