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Blog  ›  You Can’t Hit a Target Blindfolded: Why We Exhibit at ObesityWeek 2017 (and It’s Not Why You May Think)

You Can’t Hit a Target Blindfolded: Why We Exhibit at ObesityWeek 2017 (and It’s Not Why You May Think)

Listening to Customers is the Key to Effective Customer Engagement Earlier this month, we published a news release to announce our attendance at ObesityWeek 2017 as an exhibitor—continuing what has become an annual tradition for us since 2013. In the release, we wrote two important things that say as much about why we are attending […]
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obesityweek 2017

Listening to Customers is the Key to Effective Customer Engagement

Earlier this month, we published a news release to announce our attendance at ObesityWeek 2017 as an exhibitor—continuing what has become an annual tradition for us since 2013. In the release, we wrote two important things that say as much about why we are attending ObesityWeek as they do about our company. First, we wrote “understanding why bariatric clinics struggle with figuring out how to get new bariatric patients” is among our key objectives for attending this year. Second, we wrote “we are always eager to use this invaluable time to listen and better understand bariatric clinics’ obstacles for improving surgery volumes, patient satisfaction and positive outcomes.” Do you see a connection between the two? Most simply, it’s all about patient engagement.

Patient Engagement Without Listening is Not a Strategy…It’s Guessing

If you are responsible for getting more bariatric surgery patients at your clinic, you know that getting potential patients to believe you are the best solution for them requires you to first understand what they want and need. That requires listening, which is a huge part of the patient engagement process. Without engagement, trying to figure out how to honestly and successfully position yourself as a bariatric surgery solution (and to reap the rewards) is like trying to hit a target while blindfolded: At best, you know the approximate direction of the target, but you are merely guessing at what you are aiming. Even if you are lucky and can hit your target once, it’s very unlikely you’ll ever hit it again because you’ll always be guessing. A glitch with the customer engagement process—especially in the context of healthcare marketing—is that listening often takes a backseat to one-way communication. The urge is often to push your message/solution rather than to hear your customer’s actual needs/problems. Guideway Care understands this because we have a lot in common with clinics like yours. Like with your business, we must know what our customers need. Like with your patients, there are never really any one-size-fits-all solutions for our customers. Like with your medical procedures and treatments, we are always embracing innovations and adapting to changes. The difference is that our customers rely on us to give them the tools to make engagement easier and more productive. Since engagement is such a crucial part how we thrive as a business—which depends on our ability to boost customers’ success in patient acquisition, management and satisfaction—we must constantly be thinking about how to be better at listening.

How We Engage and Listen at Healthcare Conferences and Trade Shows

Too often, healthcare trade show and conference exhibitors send out their sales teams in hopes of bringing back new leads to develop into customers. There’s nothing entirely wrong about that if the company is pushing commoditized goods or believes its services are perfect, one-size-fits-all solutions. That’s not us. Some of the more recent and important improvements to our Sequence CRM and medical call center were directly related to engaging with the bariatric surgeons and program coordinators that have visited our ObesityWeek exhibition booths. These include:

• Increased focus on bariatric patient conversion: Although finding new patients is always a top healthcare marketing goal, we learned that bariatric clinics more often struggle with converting prospects into patients. As a result, we upgraded our Sequence CRM to make it easier to boost bariatric surgery conversion rates and volumes.

• Expanded subscription-based online education content: Every clinic would love to have custom online bariatric seminars, but not all have the resources to produce them. After learning that many clinics would be able to improve conversions with more economical online patient education options, we added more slides and templates to our customers’ online education subscriptions.

If you are attending ObesityWeek 2017, please visit us at Booth 914 and let us know how we can help you improve your bariatric surgery patient acquisition and engagement!
Guideway Care  is a cloud-based technology and services company that improves profitability and patient outcomes for hospitals and practices through end-to-end patient engagement solutions backed by clinical and non-clinical teams. Its HIPAA-compliant, SaaS platform improves care team workflows, automates patient communication and tracks patient progress to optimize the patient journey. Since 2004, leading healthcare providers have trusted Guideway Care to help acquire, manage and engage patients through complex episodes of care.