How important is brand integrity to you and your organization? Most would say that it’s right up there with fulfilling the mission. But how well are you living your brand promise? I recently asked a group of health care marketers to share their branding statement or tag line. Many of them used words like quality, compassion, care and excellence. It may be easy to put these words in print, but it’s a whole lot harder to consistently put them into practice.
If you promise quality, you had better be able to deliver on that promise during each moment of truth along the patient experience pathway. Quality is in the eye of the beholder and may not have anything to do with clinical outcomes. After all, your patients expect you and your organization to be clinically competent. To the consumer, quality is more often gauged by the friendliness of the staff, their empathy, efforts to make them more comfortable, and their attention to details.
A healthcare relationship is all about trust. And everything about the patient experience must build trust. That includes everything from the first telephone encounter through the on-site visit all the way to the bill. Does everything help to build trust? In my work, I often speak with patients who tell me that it is often the seemingly small things that shatter trust. These can be cluttered waiting rooms, messy bathrooms or lack of eye contact when rooming the patient.
Delivering on the brand promise means that you have to manage the patient experience at every point of entry and during every point of contact. Your reputation depends on it. Take a look at your patients' experience and compare it to your mission and vision. Then ask yourself how well you are delivering.