Customer experience and accessibility are critical to elevating the human experience. Regardless of the business sector in which we work, service is a differentiator. We know through research that service can carry a business forward or cause it to fail. Accessibility is paramount to delivering the superior services our customers are seeking; however, we struggle with ensuring our customers have access to us and we have access to them.
Covid-19 has demonstrated the urgent focus customer experience practitioners should champion regarding accessibility to goods and services across all sectors. In the healthcare industry we face many challenges with patients not having accessibility to their medication, mental health treatments, and social interactions, to name a few.
The US National Library of Medicine published a paper, “Impact of the Covid-19 Pandemic on Consumers’ Access to Essential Medicines in Nigeria.” The researchers discovered that 35 percent of the respondents managing chronic illnesses had difficulties accessing essential medicines during the Covid-19 lockdown, with 84 percent experiencing deteriorating chronic health conditions in the light of difficulty in accessing their medicines. Their findings led the authors to make several recommendations on how Nigeria could create greater accessibility for those in need of their medication such as through community-based groups.
Considerate design
Dr. Andrew Gallan of Florida Atlantic University, Assistant Professor of the Marketing Department, is a noted expert in the field of service design, patient experience, customer well-being and healthcare design.
Dr. Gallan recommends that the healthcare industry should “design with the patient and their families to understand what is important to them and how we can reduce their suffering”. He also shares a story about how a healthcare organization with patients in a rural community opened local hubs for patients and their children to attend telehealth appointments, which led to a better experience. The patients no longer needed to drive into the city to been seen by providers.
The advice of Dr. Gallan demonstrates we must meet our customers where they are. When improving digital services, we need to consider the population we are serving. Will they have access to the technology we use or even be able to read and understand what they are seeing?
It should be noted that service design can go wrong when we do not engage our customers or consider their accessibility. Nikki Montgomery, author and distinguished expert on equity and inclusion, safety, and health literacy, made an observation regarding drive-through Covid-19 testing sites. She raised the concern no one was considering the population that was too elderly, too sick to drive or without the financial means to visit locations for testing.
In our rush to improve a service or create a new one, we must remember to make it accessible to all. By doing so we can limit and even eliminate disparities and elevate the human experience.