6 customer experience pitfalls to be aware of

In recent times and across many sectors, companies have been forced to rebuild many processes due to the rise in demand for excellent customer experience.

Expectations are advancing, and things like getting immediate help from customer service, integration among the touchpoints, and personalization are the new normal in many sectors.

In the same way, enhancing customer experience in the medical business is becoming important, and companies are transforming their culture and building plans to sustain the shift.

Today I will discuss 6 pitfalls I have identified as most common when improving customer experience in the medical business.

1. Trained sales force

I’ve already touched on this topic in a previous post. So, here I will focus particularly on the need for a properly trained sales force.

A crucial part of the customer experience is the interaction between the customer or prospect and the sales rep. For a customer, there is nothing more frustrating than communicating with a salesperson with insufficient knowledge and selling skills.

Unfortunately, effective selling is a core competence that is not innate; on the contrary, it must be developed and constantly adjusted to the changing environment.

Sales training helps the salespersons to develop and practice the skills they need to succeed in satisfying customer needs.

Too often, MedTech and Pharma companies forget this key element by providing only superficial training. Only some companies and a few distributors provide a full training curriculum allowing the salespeople to develop from sales reps to true customer advisers.

2. Buying customer satisfaction

Buying customer satisfaction is a phenomenon that artificially improves customer satisfaction scores without directly linking to company results.

For example, your company sets a goal of improving distributors’ satisfaction and regularly measures via surveys the satisfaction score.

Channel managers, for example can artificially influence the score by providing a discount or an extra service just before the distributors fill out the survey.

Although the customer satisfaction score could have improved, sales, mindshare, and engagement will not change.

If the senior management is not able to translate a better customer experience and related customer satisfaction into better business results. In that case, the effort will likely seem pointless and lose team support.

3. No prioritization

When tackling the customer experience, there is the risk of finding infinite elements that need attention. Some leaders will start trying to fix everything at once.

This approach leads to a lack of resources and lack of focus, diluting the impact of the initiatives.

For example, in my personal experience with medical devices, customer and distributor satisfaction was closely linked to three main elements: low backorder level, accurate and prompt information, and rapid service and repairs. Working on other components of the customer experience will not have a substantial impact without previously addressing the three main factors.

To enhance the customer experience, it is important to effectively prioritize efforts and resources to focus on problems that will create the most meaningful customer outcomes.

4. No mapping end-to-end customer journey

To work on the customer experience, it is important to understand the end-to-end customer journey. Furthermore, the customer experience should be considered as customers do, analyzing the journey a customer takes to achieve the desired goal.

Sometimes, companies try to solve issues around a single touchpoint instead of considering the full customer journey. For example, the need for an immediate loaner during the repair of capital equipment.

Addressing this touchpoint by increasing the loaners’ pool and improving the logistics could lead to an incremental change in the customer experience without getting to the root of the problem, which is the need for repair.

Considering the entire customer journey and creating a customer journey map could help the company to reveal the root cause. In the example above, this could be misleading instructions for use, lack of customer training about product reprocessing, and poor product design reducing the lifespan.

Building a customer journey map requires the marketing team to synthesize ethnographic research and customer interviews. And other available data, such as warranty repairs, surveys, customer satisfaction, etc., to deeply understand customers’ needs, behaviors, and frustrations.

Mapping helps to reveal the true customer pain points not only within touchpoints but also between them.

5. Using wrong metrics or the right metrics in a wrong way

Customer experience can be measured in many ways. Some metrics can capture different elements of the experience.

However, metrics can be used badly and turned into a religion that is wrong as the key is to balance measurement and judgment.

For example, during congresses, the salespeople working at the booth are rewarded based on the number of collected leads. This metric adds to the acquisition of several poor and unqualified leads instead of using the time to have quality conversations with customers and prospects.

Another example is using the Net Promoter Score without considering all the elements needed for a statistically significant Net Promoter survey: population size, response rate, the margin of error, confidence level, and standard of deviation. This situation will lead to irrelevant data due to high volatility. 

6. Not considering all the customers

In the MedTech business, there are several customers involved with product use.

For many years, the key customer has been the doctor, and many companies, when working on customer experience improvement, focus their efforts only on this customer.

To improve the customer experience, it is important to consider all the customers or stakeholders concerned by the product including, for example, the direct or undirect sales force.

As for pitfall number 4, building a customer journey map allows the marketing team to identify all the stakeholders and their roles.

For example, to improve the customer experience, single-use flexible endoscopes provide safety and a streamlined workflow to the end user. And cost transparency, no reprocessing and repair costs to the hospital administrator.

Final words

Medical companies that want to enhance the customer experience and improve customer loyalty, customer satisfaction, and profits have numerous opportunities.

Identifying those opportunities and staying on the path requires a clear commitment from the company’s leadership.

To build a standout customer experience and avoid these 6 pitfalls, the company should consider the customer experience as an integral pillar of the strategy.

I’m sure there are other pitfalls in customer experience. Please share your thoughts in the section below. And if you like the content of this blog, don’t forget to subscribe.