Customer Experience: A CMO Perspective

What is customer experience, why is it important, and how can we create it? A healthcare Chief Marketing Officer shares her lessons.

41:55

Mar 22, 2019
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What is customer experience, why is it important, and how can we create it? A seasoned Chief Marketing Officer explains what you need to know and shares lessons from her experience.​

Pernille Bruun-Jensen Biography

Pernille Bruun-Jensen is the Chief Marketing Officer (CMO) of GoHealth Urgent Care, the national leader in patient-driven Retail Healthcare.

She is an accomplished CMO with an extensive track record of developing game-changing patient-driven strategies that accelerate profitable growth by leveraging a data-driven, visionary and entrepreneurial approach. She drives digital performance-based marketing and innovation and is known for building winning teams with a strong focus on results. Pernille’s experience spans consumer goods, financial services and health care, as Country Manager and International Marketing lead for Intuit, CMO for NetBase; Vice President, Digital Marketing for Sutter Health; and various marketing roles for Johnson & Johnson, and Kraft Foods.

Pernille earned her master’s degree in International Management at ESCP-Europe, and lived in the United Kingdom, Switzerland, France, Germany, and Denmark before moving to the United States. She speaks five languages.

Transcript

Michael Krigsman: Customer experience is one of the most important and challenging topics in marketing today. As part of our series, speaking with the most innovative marketing leaders in the world, we're talking with Pernille Bruun-Jensen, who is the chief marketing officer at GoHealth Urgent Care. They're trying to rethink the relationship between healthcare providers and consumer.

Pernille Bruun-Jensen: Our product is a unique experience. We combine the best of retail with clinical quality of care and also superb design and technology, all incorporated into one great experience. We have urgent care centers, 126 of them right as of today, actually, across the U.S. from coast to coast, working with 6 different health systems across those states, so a super exciting business to be in.

Michael Krigsman: You're the chief marketing officer so, very briefly, tell us about your role and what you do.

Pernille Bruun-Jensen: Yeah, so as chief marketing officer of GoHealth Urgent Care, basically, my job is to deliver an amazing experience, together with my colleagues. That is what we're here to do. In fact, the vision at GoHealth Urgent Care is two words: unparalleled experiences.

As a marketeer, my job is to help customers find us and to help them find us for the right things, actually services that we can offer, and to give them a fantastic experience on the way to the healthcare that they will receive, support during that, and also, of course, afterwards and keeping them happy for a very long time to come. That is what I think about and dream about, day in and day out.

Customer Experience is Crucial

Michael Krigsman: It sounds like this notion of experience and customer experience is a crucial core part of how you think about marketing.

Pernille Bruun-Jensen: It totally is. I really think that we live in an experience economy today. With society as connected as it is, any brand, any company really needs to take a close look at, how does the consumer feel about you? Certainly, for GoHealth Urgent Care, we've decided to create an experience business, disrupting healthcare, and really setting a vision for how retail healthcare, what it should look like, and how it should feel to customers. Yeah, I'm really keen on customer experiences, overall, and have been my entire career.

Michael Krigsman: Pernille, when you say that you decided to build an experience business, please elaborate on that so we have a better understanding of what that is.

Pernille Bruun-Jensen: Absolutely. Now, clearly, lots of smart people created GoHealth Urgent Care before I joined. I'll talk about what they set out to do. That's actually why I joined. I got excited about that particular rendition of healthcare.

The experience was really designed to disrupt healthcare, to bring to consumers what they want, when they want it, and how they want it in today's age. Really looking at how consumers would like effortless check-in upfront and an ability to find same day care or next day care on their premises on the time that works for them and in a place that was convenient for them, often close to where they lived.

Then the entire experience was really created so that, as a consumer, you could literally take your phone, find the right center for you in your community, scroll down, look at what time you would like to be seen that worked with your calendar, and select that, turn up and, basically, on the way there, even, upload some of your insurance details so that you could go paperless from the entire experience and not feeling you always have to answer the same questions over and over again, just having a much more transparent, really, relationship with healthcare. Then, upon arrival, you're arriving in these great centers that are so beautifully designed really to already start the healing process for you.

You come to one of our centers. You see these big windows; light flowing in. Nobody is hiding. The moment you come in, you check in on the kiosk, and there is someone from the care team. They will see you. They will make eye contact. There's a lobby, not a waiting room, because the whole point is to not wait a long time. Yeah, the flow just goes from here.

The net of it is a flow was created to really deliver on what customers wanted from, really, a new breed of healthcare and then making sure that, what they took for granted, great clinical care, was given to them, of course, at the moment of need. The build around was so much more than taking care of your flu or your sore throat or your broken ankle, whatever might have happened. The build around is that experience. It's not just the care moment in itself, although that's a crucial moment.

Michael Krigsman: Pernille, this notion of customer experience, of making decisions based on what the consumer cares about, it sounds kind of obvious and intuitive, but it's really hard. Why is it so difficult?

Pernille Bruun-Jensen: I think any marketeer would say we pride ourselves on being great at understanding consumer insights, turning data into insights, and always thinking about the consumer first that everybody would have done historically to create a new product and to think product. When it comes to customer experiences, it's so much more than a product because you're literally thinking about all the touchpoints that surround really the delivery that you're ultimately offering at the core of that.

What happens when you think customer experience is, you're really trying to understand the customer journey or design the customer journey. What you're looking at, you're looking at all the touchpoints that the consumer will have with you and you're designing for a fantastic experience on every single one.

You really go in with a mindset of design architecture, you look at the user experience in great detail, and you test. You suddenly realize that, "Wow, they're touching the website at this moment. They are not getting the information they need. We have to make sure they get that," or, "Why are they asking all these questions?" That means we haven't addressed questions early on. It's just really asking an entire team that is surrounding that customer to think first and foremost about delivering a high bar of a pre-described experience to fulfill, ultimately, that product promise.

Michael Krigsman: This approach to customer experience goes far beyond marketing. Can we even call this type of customer experience marketing since it's so broad?

Pernille Bruun-Jensen: I actually think customer experience is everybody's business in a company that is hooked on delivering it. It certainly is at GoHealth Urgent Care. No matter who you speak to, whether it's the CEO, whether it's the medical assistants, whether it's the radio technologist or someone in my team or, for that matter, in our billing team, everybody knows that we are here to deliver unparalleled experiences. It's all of our jobs, so we hold ourselves to that and we measure against that.

Are we making it better for the customer to come see us? Are we making it easier to sign up? Are we giving them, overall, a more connected experience so we can now help them book that next appointment with the health system? How are we doing our job better to actually, overall, make the experience a better one for the customer? It's everybody's job.

For me, sitting and representing the marketing function, that means I'm tied into the business goals, the overall vision, of course, and the business goals we have really aimed at delivering fantastic experience and, of course, with that, fantastic growth as well and just a great business at the same time. I look at all of those aspects.

Michael Krigsman: It sounds like customer experience actually is at the heart of your core business strategy.

Pernille Bruun-Jensen: It is. Basically, our currency is customer experience. That is what we have turned into our competitive advantage. That's really what we excel at. That is what I'm passionate about. I think anybody who joins GoHealth Urgent Care will need to be passionate about that.

Just like before in other roles, I would have been passionate about creating baby relief kits with Johnson's Baby to make sure that parents would have everything they didn't know they needed in terms of sickness or illness for the first couple of years of that child's life, here we are reengineering healthcare. We are doing it really on the premises of what consumers want.

It starts with the human, a deep understanding of the human. It starts with a deep understanding of the consumer and basically saying, "They deserve the best they can get. Here is how we're going to create that."

Business Design Starts with the Consumer

Michael Krigsman: That's interesting. You say you're reengineering healthcare starting with the consumer, really thinking about that customer experience from the beginning to the end.

Pernille Bruun-Jensen: Definitely. There's so much history in healthcare, right? Many healthcare systems, of course, have also been created through amalgamation, buyouts, consolidation and often, at the heart of that, it's not necessarily that easy to go into reengineer mode or scratch mode and really design that experience from scratch because you actually might be reliant on lots of systems that you're now trying to glue together to even be able to connect the customer across lots of different service lines. I think, for us and for anybody who is serious about winning through experience, it's well worth the while to go all the way back to the drawing board and challenge, what could we do better?

I really love how, actually, using testing to again challenge that. Have you got it right with the consumer? How do you know you've got it right? This is where user experience testing, just ongoing A/B multivariate testing becomes really important to actually pressure test why you think, in your own company, that you are so smart that you've got it right. Really constantly trying to compare a couple of different options and see which one wins with the consumer.

That's something I just think is at the real heart of thinking about experiences all the time. That means constantly challenging yourself. Do you have it right? Are you listening to the consumer?

I think, really, that deep listening was always at the heart of everything in marketing. When it comes to experiences, it actually leads with that consumer voice. You're flipping it on its head. You're no longer looking at the world through the eyes of the brand. You're really looking at the world through the eyes of the consumer and you're thinking about your audience. You're designing for your audience, first and foremost.

Digital Marketing and Measurement

Michael Krigsman: Pernille, when you talk about this type of user testing and A/B testing, are you referring to digital marketing or is that something that you do in other, non-digital areas of customer experience?

Pernille Bruun-Jensen: Yes, of course. I love the measurability of testing with digital, so definitely at the core of what I do with GoHealth Urgent Care is an innate focus on using digital because it's super targeted and, more importantly, I can really get great insight from data and, therefore, learnings for how we can do better. I use digital testing, actually, a lot.

What that means is less dependency on focus groups, but really looking at the consumer behavior when exposed to different kinds of concepts or different architecture, different ways to navigate the journey with us. For instance, often, I think it really sort of begs the question, should you invest more in marketing or should you invest more in the experience?

Most people, when it really gets down to it, most companies will really frown at potentially taking some advertising dollars and investing them in the experience, but I've come to learn the hard way that definitely there is no such thing as a good investment if your experience is broken. What I really like to do is, and I've done that also in other businesses but also with GoHealth Urgent Care, I try to put a bit of pressure on the journey with the consumer.

What if I now invest more? Do the pipes break? Does the experience still hold as you try and go into higher growth modes and higher scale? What I've uncovered is that potentially an experience that might have worked with lower volume might not work as well with higher volume coming through the pipes.

Suddenly, they start potentially to show me, wait a minute; the navigation ain't as great as it could be," or, "Oops. This subsection of the website wasn't actually as mobile ready as it should be," because you've been around for a long time. Content might have been out there for many years. Of course, while that has happened, the world has gotten more mobile. I think that constant testing, learning, and changing your mind and constantly being focused on making the journey better is exactly what drives for a great experience.

Michael Krigsman: For you, digital marketing, in a way, ultimately -- I'm not trying to put words in your mouth, here. This is what I'm interpreting. For you, digital marketing comes down to, number one, having the right set of experiences, processes, and flow with the customer. Then, number two, from a digital standpoint, testing, testing, testing, and more testing to refine what you're doing.

Pernille Bruun-Jensen: Yeah. Basically, when I look at what are my goals as a CMO, I look at, of course, what are the company's goals? That's what I tie to everything I do.

We've got to go and get crazy growth? All right. I'm tying my goal to that. How do I do that?

Customer-first thinking, I then look at using all of my possible channels, tools, insights, content to really help deliver for the customer so that, ultimately, we can deliver on the business objective we just set ourselves. Of course, what I find is, and most categories will see this, that often the journey for a customer starts with finding you and finding you online. Often, that very start is actually the Google search. It really is about being found, initially. Often, that very start happens in Google, right?

In healthcare, around 93% of people will really start looking for doctors or urgent care really using Google. That's kind of where it begins. Per se, that's outside of where I deliver care, where the team is delivering care, but that's the start of the journey.

Customer Journey and Digital Marketing

Michael Krigsman: Okay. You're thinking about the customer journey. It begins with Google. What does that mean for how you optimize your marketing efforts?

Pernille Bruun-Jensen: Yeah, so visibility is the starting point, also because we are retail healthcare. If you are not found, if you can't be found through the address on the Google Map through a search, then you actually don't exist when you're delivering a service like GoHealth Urgent Care. It starts with a couple of things.

Specifically, I have a DNA on each retail center at Google My Business DNA. Managing that one very carefully. That one has to be optimized at all times with a very clear profile that's bindable at a local level and, importantly, is optimized for mobile because the majority of people will be using their mobile phone.

Then in terms of search on Google, it means a real strong focus on both my branded search and advertising being totally in tune with, what are the keywords that consumers are actually finding solutions by? What are the keywords that they're finding urgent care by? I absolutely have to be on top of that with the agency and with the team.

It really starts with diving into that and then designing content to reflect that, designing all advertising to be found like that in Google, and then being local about it. Servicing communities means, ultimately, it's a local decision. It's a decision within the community. How am I showing up locally? That's the very beginning. As a CMO, I've got to be all over that.

Michael Krigsman: All right, so that customer journey is beginning on Google. What happens next and where does your marketing organization fit into that journey that the customer is taking? What are the activities that you're undergoing, undertaking?

Pernille Bruun-Jensen: Yeah. Totally hear you, Michael. You just heard me talk about, we are all over search, understanding consumer paths, managing for that local visibility. The content component of that is also a really big area. Often, when we talk about customer experience or marketing, in general, we talk about the importance of content.

The reason why content is important here, it's another way to be found, and it's another way to be relevant. Content buildout is a key component of the arsenal to really, ultimately, bring the consumer to the anchor, which is really the website. Whether that is experienced by mobile phone or by desktop doesn't really matter.

What I'm trying to do is answer the consumer's question. You have a need? You cut your finger? Can you use urgent care for that? All right. I've got to answer all of these questions and now take you to the website.

Then the website has to load quickly because you're probably on your phone, so we're looking at speed as a major factor of the experience here. Then you've got land in a place that is super relevant and perfect for the targeting, super relevant to you if you're asking a question is about, "Can we stitch your finger back together," or, "Can we do an x-ray?" you need to check if you have a broken foot, or, "Can we strep test because you have a sore throat and you don't really know why?" You want those answers.

Content and where you land on the website is the anchor for, "All right. You're hearing me. You're listening. You're giving me the right information at the right time." Then, basically, in that moment, we will make it easy for you to find your way through Google Maps to one of our locations. Call, if that's what you prefer or, basically, right now go online, just choose the time that works for you, and we'll see you.

Michael Krigsman: These folks, your customers may be undergoing, maybe often, some type of severe medical situation because that's why you're GoHealth Urgent Care, after all, which means they're taking all of these steps under some pressure or duress, which makes it much harder for them.

Pernille Bruun-Jensen: Yeah, the key, actually, in terms of navigation and helping them make the right choice for their care becomes making sure that this is a minor illness or minus sickness because, if it's life-threatening, they should not go to urgent care. They should go straight to the ER. There's this whole messaging throughout that to try and make sure that the consumer is helping themselves and not delaying either if, in deed, they should be heading down a completely different avenue. We are for, really, that advice at all times, and that's key because, at the end of it, we need to keep them safe, get them healthy faster, and we are trying to direct for that.

Michael Krigsman: Given the importance of that targeting, how do you figure out the kind of keywords, for example, and concepts that you need to be targeting? How do you know that it's relevant and you're doing the right thing?

Pernille Bruun-Jensen: Yeah, so again, this is where, really, we do a lot of research looking at different types of year. There is seasonality in care and in health. Now we just entered spring. We should all be going out and getting active. Allergies might start to get on the rise again, rashes, bumps, and scrapes. Whereas, over the winter, we were potentially more worried about flu, sore throat, and strep.

The way I find that out is I work closely with the team and our digital agency as well and really research behavior. This is what I love about digital, by the way, that we are looking at real behavior. We aren't just asking you as a consumer, "Oh, do you care about sore throats?"

No, we are absolutely going and we are looking at, are you actually searching for that? Do you look at as if you are worried about a certain area? Then we look to make sure that we can address that, we are talking about it, that you can find us related to the symptom you might be experiencing.

A lot of that, actually, the predominant area of that is done through digital. This is where, covering coast to coast in the U.S., of course, I see differences between the different states that we operate in. That's just super exciting, I think.

In New York, migration from Manhattan into the Hamptons drives a whole different ask, a different behavior, and that happens in the summer with the holidays coming up. Then, in Portland, the measles outbreak might be the hardest thing. In fact, it was earlier this year. That was the thing that was going on and that everybody wanted answers about.

Segmenting and Personalization

Michael Krigsman: Segment, segment, segment, and target consumers based on a whole host of different attributes. I think we call that personalization as well.

Pernille Bruun-Jensen: [Laughter] Yeah, I tell you what. I'm on a mission to give every customer as personalized as possible a journey. Yet, at the same time, personalization ain't the same as a customer experience.

Here's why. Let's say that I get a suit tailored for you. That's highly personal, but it might be that your whole experience surrounding getting your final product ain't the great customer experience and that nobody thought about a follow-up or nobody thought about sending you a picture. Nobody thought about letting you know it's ready in two days or automatically reminding you, here is when you're coming in for a fitting.

Just because you might be creating a product that's highly personalized doesn't mean you nailed the customer experience because that one is fundamentally about all of the touchpoints. Ultimately, by addressing those, some of those become your new brand. Your experience becomes your product, effectively.

Michael Krigsman: That customer experience then, we hear this said. It's the sum of all of the touchpoints. From the consumer standpoint, this is intensely personal and becomes very, very intuitive for them if you're doing it right.

Pernille Bruun-Jensen: Gosh, yeah. Think about how much we all share. I thought it was super interesting. There was an Oracle study a couple of years ago where they asked the execs, "Dou you think a customer would leave you because of customer experience?" and 49% would say, "Yeah, a customer might leave us because of an experience they didn't like."

You ask the customers. They go, "Oh, 89% of us have already left because of an experience we didn't like." This was a couple of years ago.

It's only becoming more of an experience society. For sure, what's augmenting that is how quickly we can share. If you think about where we share, we share star ratings. We share on social. We share net promoter scores that might be from different companies. We share our experiences with each other whether it's travel, suggesting TripAdvisor, Facebook, Google reviews, or Yelp reviews. We do share.

What happens rather more than not is that, actually, that is also where we go to get an idea for where we want to shop next. We look at a stranger's point of view before we trust the company who is trying to sell us the service, the experience, or the product. We would rather read up on what are other people saying, "Should I buy my next dining table here? Should I stay at that hotel?" We actually take into account a great deal of shared content.

What that means is also if, as a business or as a marketing team, we aren't all over that, that becomes the new truth that if we're not all over our own experience, what is shared becomes that new experience. That suddenly then becomes the brand. That becomes what is being said out there. That is deeply, deeply important to me, so at GoHealth Urgent Care, we track the net promoter score after each encounter, after each care moment. We rank in the low 80s to the low 90s, so we look for that love has to be there. We look for that consumer love.

More importantly, it's not just about celebrating, "Yay!" great scores, kind of in that world-class category, but it's looking for, where did we get it wrong? Where can we still do it better? Where did we not successfully ensure that we have a consistent approach to delivering that experience over and over again? It's uniquely important to really look at what is the consumer saying.

Questions from Twitter: Connecting Healthcare Data and Making Healthcare Less Transactional

Michael Krigsman: We have a question from Twitter. Sal Rasa asks, "Do you have the intention to eventually connect patient, family, and caregiver information to the clinical data?"

Pernille Bruun-Jensen: Okay. Great question. If you look at where the world is going right now, even with Apple Pay and Apple Health, already consumers are choosing to actually carry around in their pockets on their phone or on their watch, for that matter, and sharing data. It's kind of already being tested and is happening in a couple of places.

For me, it comes down to, what does the consumer want? That is where I would always go back and start.

I design for a great experience in everything I do. I test for that. I measure for that.

What we are starting to hear, I think, across the U.S. is that consumers would like more access to their own data. That's certainly what we are hearing out there. Often, that's readily available through a patient kind of access area. Most companies offer that.

The same at GoHealth Urgent Care. There's a patient portal. Access all your own detailed data, updates, and take that with you at any one time. We're not trying to keep it from you.

If anything, already with our health system partners, already actually backend integrating that with the big health system. What that means is, you go into GoHealth Urgent Care. You get care. All that data will automatically be shared with your provider. You don't have to lift a finger so that will you avoid the risk, basically, of potentially being prescribed some medication that would clash with some medication you are already on or some kind of treatment you are on. Just making sure that there's more knowledge around you as a patient to keep you healthy and really facilitating that.

I think there is so much happening on that today. It's interesting. I'm from Denmark where that's already in place where you just take that for granted that the whole care sector is deeply connected. Yeah, I think that's where things will go, but it'll be on the consumer's premises.

Michael Krigsman: Okay. We have another question from Twitter. This is from GoldenGateUrgentCare. "Historically, patient experience in healthcare was more transactional and how do you change this transactional mindset in healthcare to something that's more supportive and customer-centric, as you've been describing?"

Pernille Bruun-Jensen: Yeah. If you think about when you're delivering a service as part of your customer experience, technology will help you do that and help you deliver a great experience but, at the end of the day, it comes down to phenomenal hiring, the talent. Who is the person who you now trust to take care of that care moment? At the moment of truth, that is at the moment of care.

Someone is ultimately seeing you because they have an issue; they have a question; they're worried; they feel bad. How do you deal with that moment? I think this is where part of designing that experience, a crucial part of that, is designing and defining exactly who is the right person to represent the experience that we want to change the world with and who has the right attitude? Who has the EQ to really listen and engage with someone without trying to talk down at them or talk just to them, but who really engages, understands, and takes all of that into consideration?

One of the things, for instance, that we actively do is, you come. You are seen for care in a GoHealth exam room. Basically, in that room, you might say, "I searched on Google and I think I might have this symptom." Okay, we'll bring it up on the screen right there together and we'll talk about, "Is this what you found? Is this what you think you have? All right. Now, let's look at what's going on."

It's this kind of active listening that I think is such a big deal, but it starts with recruiting and training the right people. Culture, onboarding, training, just getting the people in that can really deliver that experience.

Michael Krigsman: The customer experience really is the kind of next evolution of how we've thought about digital transformation. Any thoughts on that?

Pernille Bruun-Jensen: Customer experience is the new currency of how you win in markets. Most companies, most brands, can really benefit from that kind of design architecture type of thinking where you're really taking care of every single moment that matters to the consumer, every single interaction they have with you. You want to win every single one, right?

More importantly, you run KPIs on that. You're holding yourself accountable to delivering against high bars of excellence that you set assert yourself and that you hold everybody accountable to that. I also do believe that, a shared vision and a similar focus on actively delivering on KPIs like for instance net promoter score or star ratings and really looking at that. If you are not dedicated, and that is from the very top, then it won't happen.

Back to my point about, do your execs believe that customer experience can really be the differentiator for you in how you win the consumers' hearts and minds or not? If they don't, someone else is going to take that baton and run with it and make that count. That's what I fundamentally love about my job. We really, in GoHealth Urgent Care, all truly believe that the customer experience is where it's at and that's how we're going to change the world.

Role of Data in Creating Great Customer Experiences

Michael Krigsman: Let's talk about data, the role of data in customer experience.

Pernille Bruun-Jensen: Yeah. Of course, I love data, but I only love it as long as I get insights from it. That's really where I always go with data.

The beauty of our connected world is, of course, we can learn so much more and we can learn it faster provided we care to look for it and get the tools in place to actually really understand what is going on with the customer, where can we do better, right? Data is at the heart of being able to understand that.

The way that I would figure out that I would need to actually fundamentally change a key part of the customer's journey would be to analyze the data. I would really look at data as my input for where are my potential conversions breaking? Where is my engagement dropping? Is my speed not there? Where is the consumer dropping out? I want to learn that early on.

If I wait for the net promoter score until after they've actually had the care, that's after the event. I must measure, through data, all the way through the funnel, all the way through the customer's journey, and make sure that I understand, are we broken somewhere? Should our experience be fixed? Do I need to test and change something?

I even do this with advertising as well. It's no different. I use data and customer behavior as to the real metric to see, "Do they like this version versus that version?" It's very simple to get more insight.

Michael Krigsman: Okay. I the spirit of rapid-fire questions for you because we're running out of time, we have a question from Twitter. Kurian Varughese asks the question, "How do you leverage insights from local communities to improve operations of the urgent care center such as working hour, the type of services provided, and so on?"

Pernille Bruun-Jensen: Yeah, it's a lovely question. Thank you. Basically, I partner with the health system in every state that GoHealth Urgent Care operates in. That means that there will be the chance to go to a hospital, should that be the endgame. Of course, a hospital never closes.

Partner to make sure that opening hours reflect when care is needed. Of course, I'm in business, so let's start with that, not in a not-for-profit. Delivering an experience means not just creating a great experience, but also being mindful of, of course, what are your business goals; what are your KPIs? Delivering a return on investment. Being in a for-profit business, I think that about that in healthcare too.

What that means is, absolutely, researching locally, when are consumers looking for care? It's fairly easy to do, again starting with digital. It actually is really easy to find that out. We look at that, and we actually design opening hours based on that. You'll find that typically GoHealth Urgent Cares run like 8:00 to 8:00 on a given day and, on the weekend, 9:00 to 5:00. That is really reflective of when the consumer wants to see us, so it started with that mindset. These are not random hours.

In terms of what they then want to see you for, that's back to what I shared. We absolutely research that. In a local community, there might be a higher, let's say, a group of senior people living closely. What sort of care might they need help with versus, let's say, an area where we have lots of families potentially living close to that center and soccer season is just starting? Care really flows with how the year goes and what the population is surrounding that and, basically, really look at both population data to look at that, but back to real behavior data.

Then, let's never forget; you always learn a lot from the customers you ultimately get. They start to tell you something. Really taking a good look at who is walking through your door gives great insight.

Certainly, for me, that's a data point that I also use more qualitative to really look at who is ultimately finding us, but also speaking with our team members in each center. Tell me more. What are you seeing? What questions are you getting? Just having that chat. They all write a report at the end of every day on what went on that day, and I read that. That gives great insights in itself.

Michael Krigsman: There is a constant feedback loop between the data that you're getting in and how you're changing, iterating, adjusting your services, basically everything about the operation.

Pernille Bruun-Jensen: Absolutely. Last night, in our Connecticut market, I saw in the report from one particular center that they were talking about, "Oh, lots of the customers are actually on this forum and here's what they're talking about." They heard that. They heard that from a patient, from a customer who was right there.

I then go look at that and, like, "Oh, yeah. This is interesting. The community is really engaged here." Then I learn what they are talking about and what they need, so it totally works, but it's dynamic.

Michael Krigsman: All right. As we finish up, we have just a few minutes left. The future of customer experience, any thoughts on that?

Pernille Bruun-Jensen: You know I'm a believer. I think customer experience is where it's at. It's only going to become even more discriminative like who has got it and who doesn't. When we look at star ratings and reviews, this is where the world is going.

I'm sure each one of you can look at your own business. When I look at mine, I constantly have more reviews, more ratings to actually understand. The consumers are active. They're sharing, and people are influenced by it.

I think customer experience is really where it's at. Even at GoHealth Urgent Care, we don't stand still. One thing is what you can see online now or even when you go into one of our centers. We've got a lot of things going on that we're testing, black boxing, figuring out that will keep delighting customers for years to come.

Advice on Customer Experience

Michael Krigsman: Any final thoughts or advice that you can share based on what you've been doing with trying to create great customer experiences? Share advice to people who are listening and saying, "Yeah, I want to do that too, but I'm sort of unsure how."

Pernille Bruun-Jensen: Yeah. I think, number one, you can't do it alone. If you are in marketing, you can't be off in a silo and think that you, by yourself, can create a great customer experience. It is a team effort. That means really partnering, aligning, really together with the leadership team and the business and partnering across all functions to get there.

Challenge each other. I love when we can challenge each other. How can we do something better? As our team members to challenge. Are we getting it right? I would start with that. There's a lot you will know just from the data, the insights, the team members you have today that can help put you on the right track.

Then, really, just as a minimum, start reading your reviews. I think reviews are such a rich place to go hunt because, if you're winning, you will know from the love that you are seeing in those reviews, and it will be few opportunities for improvement that you'll find. If you are not in those four to five-star ratings and your reviews reflect that, or world-class NPS, then actually that's a chief indicator that it's time to really rethink and try and change things up.

Michael Krigsman: That's very outstanding and practical advice. Pernille Bruun-Jensen, CMO of GoHealth Urgent Care, thank you so much for being here with us today.

Pernille Bruun-Jensen: Awesome, Michael. Thank you so much.

Michael Krigsman: Everybody, thank you for watching CXOTalk. Be sure to subscribe on YouTube and subscribe to our newsletter, and we'll keep you up to date on all of the amazing videos and guests that we have coming up. Also, please tell your friends and colleagues to subscribe as well.

All right, everybody. Have a great day and we'll see you next time. Take care. Bye-bye.

Published Date: Mar 22, 2019

Author: Michael Krigsman

Episode ID: 587