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Digital innovation continues to reshape various industries, and healthcare is no exception. With the aim of improving patient experiences and streamlining healthcare services, organisations invest in designing omnichannel strategies and introduce new digital services. This provides care seekers an integrated experience as it improves engagement, satisfaction and highly personalised care.
Setting a common intention amongst all stakeholders
Cocoon was invited by José de Mello Saúde – JMS, with the main goal to holistically improve the customer experience, while increasing internal efficiency and reducing service costs. Grounded in the research work that Cocoon conducted, JMS sponsored the design of customer journeys in a collaborative setting involving all departments directly related with customer service, redesigning the different processes associated with each journey and ensuring:
- Consistency and quality of the experience for the end customer;
- Efficiency and speed in regards to the design of the processes for the different customer relationship channels all at once;
- Efficiency and feasibility from a business point of view;
- Feasibility from a technological point of view.
With these future experience journeys as a basis for business, design and development activities, Cocoon has conducted Service Design and UX Design activities since 2016 up until 2018 for the My CUF App, hospital Kiosks and Front-office services.
Deliver a delightful and caring experience for customers while reducing employees’s stress
In order to understand the undertaking of creating a unified experience it is relevant to mention that the CUF network had at the time ten hospitals, twelve clinics and an institute, distributed throughout many geographical areas in Portugal.
We knew that we had to have access to the lived realities of each location to better understand different clients’ pain points, and as such we went to the hospital units and clinics from the north and south of the country where we empathised with customers and staff, through contextual observations and interviews.
Part of our contextual observation work also included being present at the contact centre while calls were being answered and oriented, both inbound and outbound ones. We talked with operators and looked at the scripts and their intranet. All the resources available and how that can be a sea of information to navigate in under a quick call. This allowed us to match experience touchpoints that were previously initiated at a unit and as outside unbiased observants identify points of improvement and even others which were non existent.
Alongside this extensive work we also studied the previous My CUF App since it was one of the most important digital touch-points at the time for customers to interact with their services. We analysed its usability and user experience, interactions, technical constraints and potential improvements.
Feeling the needs of both clients and customer service employees
With a more in depth picture of how things and people operated we now could translate our findings into robust customer journeys that would clarify to the business and department stakeholders involved an unbiased vision of facts, occurrences, pleasurable experiences as well as identified pain points. We now had a profound understanding of the ecosystem of systems, workers and difficulties and stressors that could be addressed with a new strategy.
We observed waiting rooms with people waiting for their scheduled appointments, to queues on the phone to schedule appointments, to people waiting in line to pay, or just to pick up their medical exams and reports. These were some of the most impactful stressors and nodes of immediate quick wins and must have initiatives to address. CUF wanted to provide a great experience to their customers, clients and patients, not make them spend their precious time waiting and they wanted to empower their employees with digital tools that could centralize most of the customer information regardless of the unit they visited.
Fostering a cocooning experience and embracing systemic design for the benefit of customers, employees, and business growth
Cocoon held Design Thinking based workshops with management from the different service channels and an Omnichannel strategy for a unified customer service was later defined. Given the complexity of the business and the involvement of a large number of stakeholders, everyone’s collaboration was crucial for a gradual and reliable delivery of services.
From the 8 personas we identified and typified during the research phase, as well as based on the provided upon request client’s marketing department segmentation, we focused on 4 personas for the duration of the project, aligned with the accorded scope.
We then presented the as is journeys with the selected personas where we based our sessions, discussion and ideation processes.
To wrap these sessions we conducted voting on the proposed ideas that would be better suited to see the light of day according to the project stakeholders.
We were truly invested in the betterment of the experience as a whole, we understood the issues, saw the potential as well as experienced problems that could become less impactful with concerted processes that mirrored lived reality. We’re aware that when we design a heavy self-service experience the nodes in which digital channels connect and hand over information can be a stressor for service providers as well as on the field operators that have to deal with the fall out of the experience, and the frustration of the users.
With all this information in front of us we then initiated the design of the future strategy.
The emergence of an omnichannel strategy and the first prototypes
In order to ensure a consistent and fluid experience we defined an omnichannel strategy that laid its foundations on an unique technology to support all services, their processes and distribution channels.
We co-designed existing processes in an omnichannel approach to ensure a greater efficiency in terms of implementation and business validation. The user experience was custom made for each support type and service available.
This approach has had relevant results, such as the number of consults and exams has been continuously increasing on the My CUF App as well as the in-app view of exam reports, thus avoiding unnecessary trips to the units and therefore reducing the overload of face-to-face care.
Cocoon also designed the kiosks interface and experience, aligned with this omnichannel approach, which we then beta launched in one of the hospital units with the intent to study their usage and increase organic self-service use.The results were extremely positive in A/B tests. With these results, the proposed next steps were to gradually expand the use of kiosks in all other CUF health units, work on the technical availability of the new check-in and check-out processes with payment in app, followed by the design work of the Journey of a Doctor.
Materials produced to support the design process
During this project our aim was to find the best way to make the process collaborative, based on factual data, and bring clarity into the future vision as well as provide the development teams with the best possible design handoffs and assets. Some of the materials we created to support these goals included:
- Business Research Reports
- Experience Research Reports
- Service Blueprint
- Functional prototypes of the proposed new interfaces
- User Personas and User Journeys
- User Experience Tests
- User flows with UI and tech information
- User Interface Design for the Front office, Kiosks, App and waiting call panel
- Design System Libraries for Development
The after effects of this omni-channel approach: A more fluid, personalised, and time saving customer experience
Looking back to one of our main three personas, we now could provide Penelope a more autonomous experience to schedule sequenced appointments for her 3 kids, using the My CUF app.
The need to wait in line at the units before a scheduled but delayed appointment drastically saw its frustration reduced because users could now check in from their app and see how many people were waiting prior to their appointment. The app would geo locate and notify you when your appointment was near, so you could go grab a coffee before.
When you contacted a health unit in Lisbon or Porto they would be able see your 360 view profile and history, regardless of your location, as well as if you had any other family members you were responsible for, providing you with a seamless customer experience without having to drag exam reports from unit to unit.
We understand that this is a possible reality, with specific beneficial consequences for employees, clients, customers and care seekers. Especially in a healthcare setting where we want to obliterate all potential foreseeable obstacles to an already stressful situation.
A curated, well cared for and maintained omnichannel strategy can make your company’s services feel like a breeze where you want human care interaction to shine.
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