Want more patients to get the flu shot? Progress starts with understanding how people behave.
researchers in University of Pennsylvania It was found that when people took ownership, they could increase flu vaccination rates by 11%. This concept – known as the endowment effect – makes individuals place more value on the items they own. A simple text message saying “the vaccine is reserved for you” is often enough to trigger this innate response in people, pushing them toward the desired outcome.
Behavioral science techniques like these can have a powerful impact when applied to consumer engagement. Whether your goal is to increase flu vaccination rates or encourage other important healthcare decisions, leveraging behavioral science principles can reduce friction, increase personalization, and ultimately drive necessary behavioral change.
Made with ordinary people 35,000 decisions Every day, health plans face an uphill battle when they lack an understanding of how people think and make choices — and therefore fail to adapt their business models accordingly. How much do you know about your consumers? How much more do you need to study?
How friction and fuel-driven behavior change
Much human behavior can be explained by two simple forces: friction and fuel. Behavioral economist Dan Ariely uses the rocket ship analogy—to drive behavioral change, you have to increase fuel and reduce friction.
In a healthcare setting, friction is any barrier to positive health behaviors. This could be a 30-minute call waiting time or a complicated, puzzling online patient portal. When there are too many steps, complexities, or uncertainties in the end-user experience, it’s easy for patients to be dissuaded from scheduling colonoscopies or refilling their prescriptions on time.
Unfortunately, friction points are all too common in the healthcare system: 71% of consumers Facing major setbacks such as long wait times, chaotic processes and problems scheduling appointments. And this friction is not only bad for patient outcomes, but also bad for healthcare companies’ bottom lines. 8 out of 10 consumers Said they would switch providers based on these convenience factors, making it difficult for providers to ensure long-term patient loyalty without first addressing process hurdles.
Fuel, on the other hand, is anything that motivates people to choose positive healthy behaviors. This could involve providing incentives around a Covid-19 vaccine to activate the concept of reciprocity or to facilitate member testimonies about smoking cessation, which embodies the concept of social proof that people will replicate the behaviour of others to reflect the “correct” behaviour in a given situation.
When you better understand how your customers perceive friction and fuel, it’s easier to provide end users with an experience they value and come back to.
Incorporate behavioral science principles into your business
To promote healthy behavior change in your company, consider the following steps to design digital experiences that turn friction into fuel.
- Define your problem. Whether it’s increasing prescription refill rates or minimizing no-shows, reducing friction starts with identifying the problems you need to address and the outcomes you want to achieve. Design solutions around these reference points and always measure against them. For example, if your goal is to increase mammography appointments, AI-enabled outreach and engagement can share short video clips, graphics, and other tailored educational materials to understand how the program works or why Routine checkups are important as you age. Knowing your specific obstacles up front can lead to creative, intentional, and effective solutions.
- Identify barriers and benefits. Next comes the Barrier Benefit Analysis, which requires a deep dive into all the friction points that prevent end users from making healthy decisions. These barriers can relate to process (long wait times), structure (lack of providers nearby), social factors (economic instability), and even attitude (distrust of medical providers). For example, the patient may not be able to use a car or other form of transportation. A messaging platform embedded with conversational AI can reveal this barrier by turning routine appointment reminders into back-and-forth conversations. Providers can then switch to virtual visits or arrange other transportation options. Friction can take many forms – identifying where and how it affects your consumers allows you to proactively reduce barriers and improve revenue. You might be surprised at the source of friction between end users, so keep an open mind during this discovery process.
- Find ways to reduce complexity. Healthcare processes are often overly complex. Process overload is not only a headache to manage, it can also hinder your consumer experience. Streamline the process as much as possible by identifying and eliminating unnecessary steps and actions. Even the help desk that has been plagued can be improved. Rather than switching between text messages, websites and phone hotlines, patients should be able to access all the information they need about insurance coverage, procedure costs and prescription orders through one seamless omnichannel experience.
- Maintain consumer-centric engagement. three-quarters of consumers want their healthcare experience to be more personalized, and Nearly two-thirds of consumers Say if that’s the case, they’ll get care more often. As you design your digital engagement strategy, give your consumers the lead in every decision. This can be as simple as providing a timer or colored progress bar in the questionnaire to let people know how far they have come in a process. Consumer-centric design goes a long way in making people more comfortable, more engaged with your organization, and more likely to engage in behaviors that achieve your desired outcomes.
While friction points are unavoidable, increased awareness of them opens the door to smart drive technologies that reduce end-user headaches. Through intelligent consumer engagement, your organization can simplify overall system complexity and address individual-level challenges.
Combined with behavioral science, you can better understand consumers’ unique needs and the personalized consumer engagement best suited to address those needs. With a little less friction and a little more fuel, you can empower end users to make positive behavioral changes and take control of their own health.
Photo: Ace2020, Getty Images
