IDEO Customer Relations Principles and Healthcare Innovation

IDEO's Methodology and Its Cross-Industry Applications

The underlying principles of thoroughly understanding the unmet needs of customers — including their need for validation of their perceptions and how those affect their levels of satisfaction and loyalty — are successfully captured by the IDEO methodology. This is further strengthened by having client executives participate in the development of entirely new frameworks for evaluating their companies, brands, channel management, selling strategies, and services. The use of IDEO methodologies has immediate impact across all industries, as there are value chains and customers whose expectations drive the development of distribution channels, selling, pricing, and service strategies.

Instead of relying on traditional forms of gaining customer insights and feedback, the IDEO methodology concentrates on accessing the more immediate perceptions and resulting decisions that consumers rely on when choosing their brand loyalties (Nussbaum, 2004). This initially unorthodox approach to understanding unmet customer needs through an analysis of their perceptions is actually more attuned to the rapidly changing perceptions and loyalties of customers. It is well ahead in accuracy and value for companies that choose to partner with IDEO to develop their marketing, planning, and execution strategies.

The Hospital Industry and Universal Customer Satisfaction Principles

When the hospital industry is considered from a customer satisfaction perspective, perception — as demonstrated in the article (Nussbaum, 2004) — is reality. The immediacy and relevance of these perceptions are critical to the success of any business, regardless of industry. IDEO has developed an approach that combines ethnographic analysis with the ability to understand the process by which customers attain high levels of loyalty.

In this respect, the hospital industry is similar to other industries: customers' perceptions shape their satisfaction and their decisions about where to seek services. The principles IDEO applies — deep listening, observation in real-world contexts, and redesigning the customer experience around genuine unmet needs — are no less relevant in a hospital setting than in retail, finance, or hospitality. The same framework that reveals why a patient feels uncared for can reveal why a retail customer feels overlooked.

Technology Advances in Healthcare and Their Benefits

Advances in technology have led to increased productivity, improved quality of physician services, more efficient scheduling of patients, and stronger data analysis capabilities, as discussed in the "Record Time" article (Fishman, 2006). Health information technology, including data, document, and enterprise content management systems, offers demonstrable benefits in both quality of care and cost efficiency. Given these advantages, the question becomes why more healthcare providers have not embraced such systems.

Barriers to Technology Adoption in Healthcare Providers

The first and most significant factor is fear of and resistance to change. Many healthcare providers have deeply ingrained processes that also protect the existing political balance of power. Any change to these processes is perceived as a demotion of political authority by senior managers. In many healthcare organizations, accounting and finance departments are more focused on managing invoices and ensuring timely, accurate billing than on ensuring a high level of customer service is delivered (Fishman, 2006).

A second major factor is the perception that new systems pose a threat to the data itself. There is a widespread fear that once data is entered into a centralized system, it will somehow be lost or compromised. This fear of losing control over data is often driven by information systems departments, whose staff may also worry that new technology will make their roles redundant.

Third, many patients fear that these systems will make their medical histories accessible to unauthorized parties if a hacker breaches the system. The fact that there have been numerous security breaches of financial services databases does little to inspire confidence in centralized healthcare databases. These concerns, while not unfounded, have nonetheless contributed to an environment of hesitation rather than progress.

In summary, fear of how change will affect individual jobs and entire organizations is the common thread running through all of these barriers. Together, they contribute to healthcare companies remaining anchored in outdated systems, ultimately denying patients the higher level of service that modernization would make possible.

Conclusion

All of these factors contribute to healthcare companies staying stuck in their systems from decades ago, denying patients greater service that would be possible if they would just embrace, not run from, change. Whether the challenge is redesigning the customer experience through IDEO's methodology or adopting new information technology, both issues ultimately come down to the willingness of organizations to confront the unknown in service of better outcomes for the people they serve.