Emotional Journey Mapping

Congratulations, you've created a patient journey map, so now you know how a patient enters your health system and the areas they interface with, from before the time they realize they need care until after they pay for services. It's a model that consumer-focused companies have used for a long time, but there's a way to improve on it, making it more useful and actionable.

Not sure what a journey map is or how to use one? DM me and I'll give you some educational resources to get you started.

Journey maps are great for seeing how consumers or patients move through your organization, but as G.I. Joe always said, "knowing is half the battle". Who doesn't love G.I Joe? The other half of the battle is understanding how those patients feel about your health system during all those different interactions.

• Are they happy with the scheduling process, intake, and exam, but unhappy with the billing?
• Are they frustrated by the fact that they have to call in to make an appointment instead of texting?
• Is the real point of annoyance that they have a 2:00 pm appointment and wait until 3:15 pm to see the doctor?

If all you're doing is asking for a rating of 0-10 of "how likely are you to recommend us to friends or family?", and the patient answers with a 7, what do you do with that information? Why did they give you that score? What were they happy with? What frustrated them? You have no idea what to attribute that number to or how to improve it.

On the other hand, if you get feedback from patients throughout their journey, you may see scores like this:

• How easy was it to schedule your appointment - 9
• How would you rate the intake person - 8
• How comfortable was the waiting room - 4
• Were you seen for your appointment on time - 8
• How would you rate the nurse - 10
• How would you rate the doctor - 8
• How satisfied were you with the follow up - 2
• Were the fees and payment options discussed when you checked out - 8
• Did everyone treat you as a unique individual - 9

With a traditional journey map, your organization received a score of 7.3, but with an emotional journey map, you're getting feedback of 9,8,4,8,10,8,2,8,9. Because of this, you're able to identify exactly where expectations were exceeded, where they fell short, and where people were indifferent. And if you've ever had a conversation with me, you know that I feel indifference is a huge issue for health systems.

In the above scenario, the staff was great with minimal wait time, and procedures were in place to discuss billing options. The immediate areas where you can focus improvement are the waiting room and follow up. Those are low-hanging fruit with immediate impact on patient acquisition and loyalty.

Journey maps are tools that are useful in your marketing and retention efforts, but doing a bit more work to track emotions across that journey is the golden ticket engaging patients and increasing loyalty.

Follow the Money

Because journey maps come from a strong consumer background, here's some data points on consumer experience:

1. Companies that use tools like customer journey maps see revenues increase as much as 10 to 15 percent while also reducing their cost of service by 15-20% 麦肯锡
2. $1.6 trillion is lost annually in the United States as a result of consumers switching brands after receiving bad customer service 埃森哲
3. Customers expect connected journeys, and 76% of customers expect consistent interactions across departments. However, 54% say it generally feels like sales, service, and marketing teams don’t share information Salesforce
4. A 5% improvement in customer retention results in profit growth of more than 25% 贝恩公司
5. Fewer than half of the businesses questioned consider their customer experience to be excellent now, but two-thirds believe it will be in two years Gartner