Adobe Customer Journey Analytics is now part of Adobe Experience Cloud for Healthcare

For people to get the health services they need, customer journeys must be simple and easy to navigate. If even one step along the way is frustrating, confusing, or even too expensive, patients will end their journey. Unfortunately, this outcome is all too common.

For example, more than 25% of prescriptions go unfilled in a typical year. The reasons for this can be complex and may span multiple channels or even organizations. Issues can include high perceived costs, fear of side effects, and pharmacies that don’t accept insurance — or simply take too long to check on whether a medication is covered.

Figuring out what’s wrong with an incomplete healthcare customer journey requires a thorough experience checkup. And this may require examining data from digital and in-person channels, accurately mapping customer journeys, and correlating experiences with outcomes. For many healthcare organizations, this is a tall order. Data may be scattered across multiple platforms, and existing reports may not be designed to look at journeys across channels.

To make it easier for legacy healthcare organizations to understand customer journeys and bottlenecks that stop or delay the delivery of customer experiences, we are adding Customer Journey Analytics to Adobe Experience Cloud for Healthcare. With Adobe Customer Journey Analytics, healthcare organizations can quickly reveal how and where journeys break down — and make changes that are better for all customers, be they patients, plan members and administrators, or the providers themselves.

The problem with healthcare customer journeys

Healthcare companies know when customer and care journeys are falling short. Customers may fail to return a phone call or renew their health insurance, miss key follow-up appointments, fail to fill prescriptions, or neglect to submit insurance claims correctly. But the fault isn’t only — or even primarily — with the customer.

Too often, healthcare and life sciences companies don’t have a clear understanding of how customers interact with their communications and experiences in the real world. For example, consider a medical practice that actually loses patients after launching an online patient portal. Without a deep analysis, they may simply conclude that patients in their region don’t like to interact online — and they’ll scrap their new digital offerings.

But taking a closer look might uncover any — or even all — of the following issues:

• Patients must supply copious documentation to get a user ID.
• The login process includes cumbersome multifactor authentication, which requires installation of a new third-party app.
• Online appointment schedules aren’t up to date, so patients who book appointments commonly receive cancellation notices later.
• Patients with questions the portal can’t address can’t reach the practice by phone for answers because, after launching the portal, they reduced front desk coverage.

Using data to map the customer journey may show the practice that patients drop out after installing the app but before receiving a user ID. They may notice a pattern of customers who call their local office while logged on to the portal, or they may discover something else altogether.

Still, without analyzing the customer journey, the medical practice will see only the “what” — patients leaving for competing medical groups — without the “why.”

Reveal the care journey with Customer Journey Analytics

Customer Journey Analytics connects data from every customer touchpoint. This empowers healthcare payers and providers — as well as pharmaceutical and medical device companies — to explore customer journeys in real time. Gaining the insights they need to give their customers empathetic, relevant, and meaningful care experiences at scale is a critical component of personalization. For example, an insurance provider might take a deeper dive into why customers don’t make preventive care appointments that are fully covered or don’t use their drug benefits.

Protect patient privacy

According to our 2022 Digital Trends: Healthcare in Focus report released this year, nearly two-thirds of millennials (65%) and half of Gen Z adults (49%) have concerns about the privacy of their health information and personal data. Adobe recognizes how important it is to protect patient data and comply with all necessary regulations. That’s why Customer Journey Analytics, as implemented in Adobe Experience Cloud for Healthcare, collects, stores, and uses data in ways that comply with HIPAA security and privacy rules.

It can easily identify and secure protected health information (PHI) — information that relates to someone’s past, present, or future health state — as well as personally identifiable information (PII). In addition to data type identification, Customer Journey Analytics can apply access rules and create data use audits so you can feel confident that patient data is being handled in a compliant, ethical way.

Deliver compassionate and connected care

Customer Journey Analytics can help healthcare organizations transform care journeys from a frustrating, confusing, and non-personal bureaucratic hassle into an intuitive, intelligent, and personalized experience. Insights from Customer Journey Analytics can keep care journeys moving smoothly across channels, so patients don’t get stuck when they try to schedule, access, or pay for needed care.

Healthcare and life sciences companies are using Customer Journey Analytics to:

• Map care journeys across online and in-person channels. For example, a pharmacy might discover that customers often decline a consultation with an in-person pharmacist but, instead, search for side effect and drug interaction information online.
• Uncover bottlenecks that can cause customers to delay decision-making, put off buying decisions, and end their journeys. For example, a hospital might discover that patients who don’t return for follow-up appointments have been receiving SMS reminders in a language they don’t easily understand.
• Gain a better understanding of what causes patients and customers to advance to the next stage in their journey. For example, an insurance company might discover that reminding their small business customers about open enrollment periods for employees can improve policy sales.
• Identify hidden customer needs. Customer Journey Analytics can provide insights by connecting customer journeys to seemingly unrelated information. For example, a hospital might find that customers tend to cancel appointments on rainy days, which suggests alternative transportation options may be in order.

Transform your interactions with Adobe Experience Cloud for Healthcare

Adobe Experience Cloud for Healthcare is a complete offering that empowers healthcare providers to continually improve care experiences while protecting patient privacy. In addition to Customer Journey Analytics, our comprehensive HIPAA-ready healthcare offering includes:

• Adobe Real-Time Customer Data Platform. Real-Time CDP connects customer data from all your channels into unified profiles that support the discovery of insights and the delivery of personalized experiences.
• Adobe Journey Optimizer. Journey Optimizer allows organizations to orchestrate and automate care journeys that span multiple channels.

Experience Cloud for Healthcare is designed to work for providers, payors, pharma, med tech, and more.

Healthcare organizations have more on their plates than ever before, from staying ahead of the latest variants to addressing everyday health issues like insurance coverage and preventive care. And the faster they can complete their digital transformations, the more effective they will be. If your healthcare organization has high standards for patient and customer experiences but struggles with manual processes and disconnected customer journeys, Experience Cloud for Healthcare can help.

Learn more about how Adobe Experience for Healthcare can get you on your way to stronger, more human interactions.