Companies can avoid Commoditization of EMR/EHR software and services by creating value through memorable experiences.
This shift cannot happen overnight. Before it filters to sales, it has to emanate from such experiences of clients. These experiences are propagated through buzz that marketing can encourage and facilitate.
Every business is ultimately a stage where performances are created by actors and watched by others.
Businesses like Build-A-Bear and Disney excel at this. Customer experience can be a creative stage for performance, like the customer’s assembly line where customers make their own teddy bears and stuffed animals.
Often experiences are created just by interactions with company employees.
For example, all Build-A-Bear Workshop employees attend ‘Bear University’, a three-week training course. They learn the ‘way of the bear’ and are encouraged to be imaginative and tireless in creating memorable experiences with customers.
Owners and leaders of EMR companies should attempt to do these two things to get a feel for the ‘stage experience’.
- Visit a different client every month. All clients have issues. Sit with the client as they make a call to your customer service department and listen-in to conversations. How are clients treated, how are issues resolved, how are they greeted?
- Field the Customer service phone desk once a month to understand client issues, concerns.
These two simple steps will pave the way for avoiding commoditization of your product. Your own clients will prevent commoditization of your products.