Traditional healthcare companies manage complex operations, from appointments and prescription refills to providing explanations of benefits to many millions of patients each year.
To succeed at delivering this scope of support at scale, companies invest millions — sometimes billions — every year into back-end technology to ensure everything runs smoothly. Having the right digital tools in place, such as mobile apps and self-service options, can boost customer satisfaction and loyalty while helping healthcare companies reduce their expenses.
Just a handful of years ago, mobile apps weren’t a top priority for healthcare companies. Since then, companies have shifted their perspective on how apps fit into their strategies and have realized that healthcare apps offer a win-win solution for both customers and companies.
This blog recaps our recent webinar, How Healthcare Companies Improve Retention and Reduce Support Costs Through Digital Adoption. You’ll learn the many benefits of healthcare apps and how to maximize your app’s potential and transform the way customers engage in healthcare.
Value added: How apps drive efficiency and customer experience
Before the adoption of healthcare apps, customers were dependent on call center support to learn information and perform transactions. With the app, they have the ability to bypass lengthy waits for customer support and can find the information they seek promptly and on their own time. Apps also offer helpful features like direct messaging between providers and patients, test results, and prescription refills. Customers find value in having access to their healthcare information in the palms of their hands, both for convenience and efficiency.
“On the brand side, [enabling] customers to do the things they want to do in a frictionless way is good for long-term retention,” says Reed Kuhn, head of business strategy at Branch.
Building a business case for healthcare apps
As if enhanced efficiency and a better user experience weren’t enough, healthcare apps can help cultivate customer loyalty and engagement.
The first step in reaping the benefits is to get customers to download and use the app. Healthcare companies should prioritize getting patients on the app using existing customer touchpoints, such as emails and billing, so they can use it to deliver value-added features. Once customers are engaged with the app, healthcare companies can leverage deep linking to point users to the most commonly sought information, such as digital versions of ID cards, messaging with providers, coverage information, and other details related to their care or accounts.
Using deep links offers other benefits, too — most importantly, additional metrics.
“Each touchpoint has metrics to help brands measure the value of the app and optimize the way they use it,” notes Kuhn.
App usage can also help healthcare companies significantly lower their expenses. Apps help reduce the number of calls to call centers by pointing customers to self-service options that cost companies less than their traditional counterparts, such as paperless billing, online bill payment and document requests, DIY account updates, and more.
All of these benefits underscore the value of investing in a healthcare app.
Branch’s focus on Advanced Compliance
While other industries lean on apps to drive sales, healthcare is different. It involves private information about patients’ health, which is protected by law.
It’s important for healthcare companies to balance the convenience of an app with the protective measures required to remain compliant with the latest U.S. Department of Health and Human Services guidelines and HIPAA.
“It is a mission-critical need in order for them to provide this app experience,” says Sarena Lynch, strategic account executive at Branch.
Branch Advanced Compliance offers solutions to help healthcare providers enhance the user experience, drive revenue growth, and minimize the cost of serving customers — all while remaining in compliance with privacy regulations.
The solution accomplishes this in two ways. First, it provides a secure gateway that obscures user data by providing additional encryption and authentication practices. It also has a protected end point that allows it to hash data, so if a breach were to occur, the data would no longer be of use to any unauthorized parties who might try to access it.
“That means we’re still able to provide attribution data on how users are interacting with their app without jeopardizing the security of the data that is passing through it,” explains Lynch.
Because of Branch’s commitment to remaining compliant with evolving requirements, healthcare companies are able to benefit from the platform’s attribution and engagement features without skipping a beat.
Developing a winning app strategy
Apps can add significant value for healthcare companies if they make the effort to create a successful app strategy. Sophie Frostbaum, senior business strategy manager at Branch, stresses two key focus areas: driving app adoption and harnessing the potential of the app. The key to optimizing adoption?
“For mobile, meet your users at their level of intent,” advises Frostbaum.
This means taking a funnel approach. At the top of the funnel are low-intent users who might visit the healthcare company’s homepage. While the reach is the highest, the view-through conversion (VTC) is the lowest. In the middle of the funnel, you have users who might log on to the site to manage their account. They’re reasonably engaged, and their VTC is higher. At the bottom of the funnel, you have the highest-intent users who are heavily engaging in mobile or desktop web features, and they have the best VTC of all.
Once you meet users where they are, you can drive app adoption through touchpoints on mobile web, desktop, and even offline. The desktop is where two-thirds of the web traffic is for healthcare, so it’s a best practice to use a QR (quick response) code on the desktop app landing page to take advantage of the direct connection with the user.
“It creates a seamless pathway to send someone to the app store so they can download and install the mobile app,” explains Frostbaum.
Healthcare companies can also use QR codes on a wide range of online and offline touchpoints, such as in appointment and prescription confirmation pages, physical signage, bills, forms, email marketing, and even on the top of a prescription bottle, as one major pharmacy brand does.
“Using Branch’s Custom QR Code UI, you can create branded QR codes and edit background and code patterns, which is an added branding opportunity,” adds Frostbaum.
The best way to maximize app adoption with these methods is to deploy deep links that take users exactly where they need to go to find the information they need in the app. If they don’t have the app installed, deferred deep linking will take users from the touchpoint to the app store, where they can download and install the mobile app. This will take them to the intended in-app content upon the first app open post install.
To promote app usage, savvy healthcare companies should also leverage the power of social media posts, push notifications, and even integrated customer service messaging to direct customers to specific in-app information.
“Once you get someone to install the app, one of the biggest benefits is you own a piece of real estate in their pocket, and you can engage with them at any point,” Frostbaum says.
Unlocking long-term value
While mobile apps are a significant investment for healthcare companies, the rewards are also great.
“There is a lot of value and a lot of cost-reduction potential,” stresses Kuhn.
Apps can help with call center deflection, drive customers to paperless billing, and encourage users to enjoy the speed and ease-of-use of self-service once the hard work of driving mobile app adoptions has been done. Partnering with the experts at Branch can help healthcare companies unlock even greater value over the long haul.
“The benefit of partnering with an enterprise-grade platform like Branch is that we are future-proofing ourselves; we are worrying about deep linking and attribution and all of these tools that enable app adoption so that you don’t have to,” says Kuhn. “Healthcare companies can focus on healthcare. Let us be the experts on mobile apps.”
Next steps:
- Watch the How Healthcare Companies Improve Retention and Reduce Support Costs Through Digital Adoption webinar.
- Learn more about our Advanced Compliance solution.