Blog :

Learnings on Key Activities for modelH
imagine.GO

Learnings on Key Activities for modelH

We just wrapped up our 11th business building block sprint on Key Activities. In summary, the sprint for Project 1.11 on Key Activities completed 2 objectives:

  • Questions to ask on the canvas for the Key Activities
  • Explanation regarding how to define and stick to only the necessary Key Activities

modelH Key Activities

1. Questions to Ask on the Canvas for the Key Activities Block

We defined the questions that should be added to our business model canvas for helping practitioners define their Key Activities.

  1. What Key Activities do our Value Propositions require?
  2. What Key Activities do our Channels require?
  3. What Key Activities do our Customer Relationships require?
  4. What Key Activities do our Revenue streams require?

modelH Canvas 11 Key Activities Highlight

2. Do Only the Right Key Activities

The first part of this sprint is about defining the work tasks you need to do to deliver your Value Proposition. However, there are a lot of ways you can waste time doing the wrong things as your work scope begins to creep. So how do you go about keeping to only the right actions that you defined in the Key Activities block? I advocate that you apply the rigors and methods of the Lean Startup to your healthcare business model – including all technology, process, and business functions.

By definition, Minimum Viable Product (MVP) is the version of a product that is made through one cycle of a ‘build-measure-learn’ loop, done as quickly as possible. Accordingly, the work tasks (Key Activities) that are required for a build must include only those that meet the minimum viable product. Although this methodology was first applied to the world of software engineering, I recommend using it across the board for all work tasks.

The term Minimum Viable Product gives some people pause. Many default to the adage that to deliver value, we must give our customers the maximum product, not the minimum. Sometimes our attempt to provide maximum value results in bloated or inconvenient products loaded with useless features that diminish, rather than enhance, the value of the product. Think of a product in its two basic value points: form and function. Stylistically speaking, function is what a product does and form is how it does it. We discussed the need to build an “expected” form, or what we call Experience, in our building block on Experience. This expected form also implies Key Activities on your part. Be prepared to collect necessary information and build it into the Key Activities in your business model.

But at the same time, when it comes to function we advocate that you only need to do the work to build the minimum viable version. This reasoning examines your Customer Relationship, built on the premise that you have a Value Proposition that will solve your customers’ Job-to-be-done (JTBD). Your Value Proposition should do that and no more than that, otherwise you are throwing energy and resources after an unknown. If you agree with this logic, then you must apply this rigor to what work tasks, or Key Activities, you set out to do as part of the functional delivery of this Value Proposition. Focus on function rather than form. The basis of your trust relationship with the customer is a two-way exchange of value. If your product is all style and no substance, then you will lose your customers. If your substance far exceeds your customers’ needs, then you are similarly doing more harm than good, as the extra value is unrealized.  An even worse case is that customers end up confused drop it altogether.  Ultimately, only do what is necessary to build your MVP.

modelH - Consumer Behavior when Purchasing

Do not forget that you are running a business and that there are laws around compliance, fillings, and finance that you must follow. These are part of your Key Activities. If you do not list the work on these core operational fronts, you have an incomplete picture of the workload and resources required, which will inhibit you from determining the Key Resources and Key Partners you will need for a concise delivery. Therefore, as is often the case, you will find out too late, and it will either shut your business down or cost you an exponential amount to resolve.

In Summary

In conclusion, we advocate that you identify your Key Activities by identifying your MVP, and adding in the other required business tasks you needs to remain compliant with laws and financial transactions. By only building what is deemed most valuable to the customer, and progressing through iterative builds, you ensure speed to market and successful releases. When you are wrong, you fail fast (and cheap). MVP assumes that you iterate until you find the ideal solution. Start small and gradually add on, based on your customers’ needs.

Take time to incorporate these approaches into the Key Activities block in your business model canvas. Regardless if your business model aims at Patients, Providers, Payers, and or Purveyors, defining the Key Activities will keep you focused on doing what is relevant to your Customer Segment’s Jobs-to-be-done and your Value Proposition. Anything else is a distraction and will lead to straying from your business model.

What is Next?

I will be publishing the findings from 1.12 Key Resources and 1.13 Key Partners over the next few weeks. Next up on the modelH Co-Creation Forum, we are going to do a short two-week sprint on Costs and Revenue.

Interested in what we are doing?

Step up to the plate and become involved. We have just a few key modules left to discuss in the proposed modelH canvas. Please join us, make your contribution, and be recognized for helping to develop a sustainable future for the US healthcare system.

To your health,

The Team at imagine.GO

 

Learnings on Experience for modelH
imagine.GO

Learnings on Experience for modelH

We just wrapped up our 10th business building block sprint on Experience. In summary, the sprint for Project 1.10 completed 3 objectives:

We defined the questions that should be added to our business model canvas for helping practitioners define their Customer Relationships.

  • What is the lowest common denominator Experience your Customer Segment is looking for?
  • Where does your Experience exceed these minimum expectations?
  • Where does your Experience miss these minimum expectations?
  • Which of your Key Activities drive your Experience?
  • Which part(s) of your business model creates “hassles” for your Customer Segments?
  • What makes it hard for your Customer Segments to find you?
  • How do your Customer Segments feel about you?
  • How easy is it for your Customer Segments to work with you?
  • What keeps your Customer Segments from recommending your Value Proposition?
  • What keeps your Buyers from shifting some or all of their business to another?
  • How likely are the Buyers to consider purchasing more from you in the future
  • Where are there hassles that keep Buyers from buying your Value Proposition?
  • Where are there hassles that keep Users from using your Value Proposition?
  • Where does your Value Proposition waste your Customer Segment’s time?
  • Where does your Value Proposition require extra or unnecessary steps?
  • Where does your Value Proposition waste your Customer Segment’s money?
  • Where does your business model create confusion for your Customer Segments?
  • Where does your business model generate avoidable risks?

modelH Canvas 10 Experience Highlight

How Do You Build Your Customer Experience?

Customer Experience is how you create great engagements for consumers as they buy/use or even consider using your products and/or services. Great healthcare companies of the future must quickly become great customer experience companies today, and for the foreseeable future. This requires a comprehensive Experience building block in your business model that:

1)     Identifies the areas for change within the current business model,

2)     Defines the change(s) that must happen, and

3)     Helps the business block owners implement changes across the organization.

Even if your business is just a cog in a value chain, and/or you have no direct access to healthcare consumers – you must remember Porter’s sense of shared value. In the healthcare ecosystem, all business models have an impact on the User – good or bad.  You should know how your Value Proposition plays out in this larger picture, and help to build your own Experience building block to ensure it is a good one. Fred Weirsema in his book How to Design a Great Experience highlights questions (listed below) for determining whether your business model (and the way you approach the market) is “in tune” with the customers you are trying to touch or impact (what Weirsema calls a Design Rule – the things a company must do to ensure it is attuned with its customers). Can my customer find me?

  • What is the top-level decision frame?
  • Does my company come up at the top of that list?
  • How does my company make sure our name appears at the top of the list?
  • Can they find my company through the channel they prefer?
  • Can they discover my company thru several channels?
  • Are SEO and SEM efforts effectively managed – to match keywords?
  • What is the bounce or abandonment rate?

2. When they find my company – is it unique? Is the impression memorable?

  • How do they find their JTBD?
  • Does that tie into my company’s uniqueness?
  • Does my company build with eye to new customer and what barriers they perceive?
  • Is the customer’s instant judgment positive about my company’s products and services?
  • Is my company’s website clear, reassuring and confident?
  • Does the website remove barriers?

3. Do your company’s processes get in the way of a purchase?

  • What is the abandonment rate online?
  • Does your company make it hard to buy or do you bait and switch?
  • Has your company gone through a buy process step by step (exactly as the customer would) – and is it smooth and predictable or is it jolting?

4. Does your company send unintended messages?

  • Is the boilerplate type of message giving off a legalese gotcha moment?
  • Has your company considered how its actions will be perceived?

5. Are your company’s products and services intuitive?

  • Do customers need an instruction manual to navigate your company’s processes?
  • Does your company build on the Minimal Viable Product (MVP)?
  • Do your company’s processes, products and services keep with what is expected?
  • Have you avoided unwanted advanced, or too many, options?

6. Does your company’s approach to the market have threaded channels?

  • Is “same customer – same data” readily and consistently available?
  • Are your company’s messages and behaviors synchronized?
  • Does your company’s treatment and approach stem from your unique brand promise?

How Do You Measure Customer Experience?

It seems plausible that you should identify and know your Customer Segments before you create products and services for them. Likewise, once you have products and services tailored especially for them – you create winning Experiences for them through the various Channels and Customer Relationships. The flow can be seen visually here.

modelH - Consumer Measurement

  1. Customer Segment Development – know your customers, (who they are, and what they want) and most importantly learn their values.
  2. Value Proposition Management – create value that your customers perceive because it effectively solves their jobs-to-be-done.
  3. Customer Behavior Management – understand your customers health needs and comprehension so you can directly and indirectly mange them.
  4. Customer Experience Management – know how your customers want to experience your products and services and create favorable engagements for them as they discover, consider, buy and use them.

This section is about measuring Experience as a business function. In as much, we should not just rely on the standard Net Promoter Score or Customer Satisfaction Score and call it a day. We must add revenue and cost elements into Experience measures because it is 1) a prudent thing to do for all business functions, and 2) critical for identifying how components of Experience drives overall revenue and impacts overall costs. When Experience is implemented properly across a business model, it will produce:

  1. An agreement and a common understanding regarding the importance and impact of Consumer Experience across all business efforts and business outcomes. (Strategy)
  2. A clear mapping and organizational (entire workforce) understanding of the Consumer Experience Journey across all touch points. (Culture)
  3. A set of Consumer Experience guides incorporated into all products, channels and messages. (Brand)
  4. A defined Consumer Experience Team organized around successful and consistent strategy execution. (People)
  5. A common model and process for using and ensuring Consumer Experience principles across the organization. (Process)
  6. An established set of Consumer Experience metrics that include revenue generation and cost consideration/understanding/containment. (Financial)
  7. A set of Consumer Experience metrics focused specifically on experience accountability across the organization. (Customer)

Consumer Experience Success Indicators

The following measures are across the key dimensions of a company and its business model.

Strategy

A measure indicating how well Consumer Experience is embedded into the corporate strategy.

  • A clearly defined, agreed to, and commonly understood Consumer Experience strategy
  • A clearly defined Consumer Experience plan of implementation (change agenda)
  • A defined maturity curve (that defines current customer experience) for how Consumer Experience will create value for the company
Culture

A measure indicating how much Consumer Experience is emphasized as a critical area by all employees/internal stakeholders.

  • A measure of overall organizational effectiveness related to Consumer Experience (e.g. Number of employees who have consumer experience as a key area of focus in their individual performance plans)
  • A shared executive measure for collaborating on Consumer Experience initiatives
    • Shared measure (connection) with Customer Development/Sales group
    • Shared measure (connection) with Channel Owners
    • A single Consumer Experience measure in the annual company performance scorecard (KPI – key performance indicator)
    • A Consumer Experience dashboard with agreed upon metrics that is widely communicated to internal stakeholders and actively managed by the senior team
Brand

A measure indicating the alignment of Consumer Experience with your company’s brand promise.

  • A measure for Customer Brand Loyalty
  • A measure for Brand Experience
  • A measure for “likelihood to recommend”
People

A measure indicating the development of the roles that lead and drive continuous improvement for the Consumer Experience function.

  • Hiring the VP of Consumer/Customer Experience who has the ability to impact organizational strategy and operational processes
  • Designing, developing the Consumer Experience roles and responsibilities
  • Hiring the Consumer Experience Team
Process

A measure indicating the clarity and utilization of the Customer Experience process.

  • Publication (communication) of a documented Consumer Experience Process
  • A documented Consumer Experience Standards Guide that is referenced throughout organizational processes and policies
  • A Customer/Member Journey Map that outlines how organizational roles and responsibilities impact each point on the journey map
  • Completion of regular Experience Audits for all channels, touchpoints, and communications
  • Implemented Experience Improvement Plans for top prioritized channels
  • Evidence of ongoing measurement of, and reduction in, cycle-time for Consumer Experience Projects
Financial

A measure indicating the effect that Customer Experience has on corporate financial performance. Revenue (attributable to Consumer Experience)

  • Wallet Share
  • Customer Profitability
  • Customer Lifetime Value
  • Market Share
  • Average Revenue per Customer
  • Number of New Customers acquired each period
  • Value of New Customers
  • New Sales Driven by Word of Mouth

Costs (attributable to Consumer Experience)

  • Customer Retention Rate
  • Customer Churn Rate/Number of Lost Customers
  • Value of Lost Customers
  • Cost to Serve Customers (total service and support costs)
  • Cost to provide differentiating value (perceived as what competitors do not offer)
  • Cost to Satisfy Customers by channel (email, chat, online, telephone, in person)
  • Ratio of Cost to Serve / Total Revenue

 

Customer

A measure indicating the Customer Experience and its affect across the customer lifecycle. Single Measures

  • Customer Effort Score CES score
  • Customer Experience Index (CXi) score
  • Customer Value Management (CVM) score
  • Customer Loyalty Score
  • Likelihood to recommend score

How easy is it for customers to find you?

  • New/Existing customers by channel  (examples below)
    • phone calls can be tracked using Google provided phone number
    • digital click thru on SEO versus SEM
    • bounce rates on keywords
    • retail visits and revisits
    • Multi-channel decision making by segment and number of touchpoints used
    • Time thru touchpoints used (channel completion rate and average time in channels)
    • Random survey reports from customers

How easy is it for customers to stay with you?

  • Reluctance to Switch score
  • Win-back After Loss (number/percentage)
  • Random survey reports from customers

How do customers feel about you?

  • Brand Trust Indicator
  • Emotional response survey
  • Random survey reports from customers
  • Perception of your company/organization by competitors

How well do customers listen to you?

  • Call center data (if applicable/available)
  • Customer compliance indicators
  • Customer understanding of your communications

How easy is it for customers to work with you?

  • Speed of application/entry process
  • Speed of issue resolution process
  • Number of customer complaints
  • Number of customer kudos
  • Customer satisfaction with specific touch points

Next up, we are going to look at Project 1.11, 12, and 13 – Key Activities, Resources, and Partners. Interested in what we are doing? Step up to the plate an get involved.

To your health,

The Team at imagine.GO

Learnings on Customer Relationships on modelH
imagine.GO

Learnings on Customer Relationships on modelH

We just wrapped up our 9th business building block sprint on Customer Relationships. In summary, the sprint for Project 1.9 completed 3 objectives:

  • What questions to ask about Customer Relationships on the modelH canvas
  • Defining how to build Customer Relationships for healthcare companies
  • A look at how to measure Customer Relationships for healthcare companies

Customer Relationship

1st – Questions to Ask on the Canvas for the Customer Relationships Block

We defined the questions that should be added to our business model canvas for helping practitioners define their Customer Relationships.

  1. Which Healthcare Customer Relationship Dimensions do you use in your business model?
  2. What type of Customer Relationships do your customers expect you to maintain with them?
  3. How costly are your various Customer Relationships models to maintain?
  4. What is your plan to market your Value Proposition to consumers?
  5. When a consumer uses your Value Proposition and has a positive Experience, how do you imagine them sharing this experience with their friends/colleagues?
  6. How will you receive consumer feedback and what is your plan to act on it?
  7. Who is the greatest Key Influencer for your Customer Segments and how will you use them?
  8. How will you get, keep and grow customers?

modelH Canvas 9 Customer-Relationship Highlight

2nd – How to Define Healthcare Customer Relationships

We also built a model for helping practitioners define and build their healthcare Customer Relationships. We reviewed seven different dimensions of healthcare customer relationships.  We added seven Dimensions of Healthcare Customer Relationships to the standard BMC: Information, Navigation, Coordination, Connection, Transition, Motivation, and Monetization.

If my tax adviser can explain healthcare reform to me in simple terms, how come my health insurance company cannot?  Worse yet, when they try, they just make me more confused and mad!

If my phone company can send me a personalized video bill, how come my doctor and insurer are still sending me those unreadable explanations of benefits?

These are simple questions to ask, with a profound underlying sentiment. With each touch, business models can improve, maintain, or deter a customer relationship. WIKI says that customer relationship management (CRM) is a model for managing a company’s interactions with current and future customers. In healthcare, the customer relationship must be around more than just your Value Proposition. Good business models must take into account both the Buyer and User in regards to their presence, trajectory, and destination within the healthcare ecosystem.  modelH advocates there are 7 fundamental dimensions of healthcare Customer Relationships that exists in healthcare.  They can be employed in various degrees and in various combinations to yield the best outcome for a particular Customer Segment.
Customer Relationships Dimensions of Healthcare Customer Relationships

In each of these dimensions, customers have preferences for both channel and message.  It usually requires some form of both emotional support and physical comfort that can also be tracked and measured for progress and completeness.

Dimension

Definition

Information

 Provides value to the customer often in the form of news, articles, Q and A, keyword search entries, videos, and/or pictures and assists in both help solve their job-to-be-done and in manifesting your value proposition to your customers.

Navigation

 Moves people in a new and positive directions and helps customers ultimately solve their jobs-to-be-done.  Navigational guides can help  shape and influence new choices and behaviors for people. Other examples of navigational guides could include providing customers with personalized action plans with expert suggestions (products, services or other activities) regarding their Jobs-to-be-done (JTBD).

Coordination

 Simplifies the logistics associated with your customers’ jobs-to-be-done.  Effective coordination should enhance your value proposition.  Examples of coordination could include helping people with their health To/Do’s, scheduling appointments, health records management (PHR), monitoring & alerting on key health notifications, and streamlining support to service providers.

Connection

 Interpersonal relationships with others, which positively benefit relationships with your customers and further enhances your value proposition. Do the channels through which you interact with your customers also seek to connect your customers to other individuals or other complementary solutions?

Transition

 Over time – meeting your customers jobs-to-be-done will require maintaining relationships with them across multiple channels and potentially multiple key partners and key suppliers.  What principles of effective transitioning have you considered in continuously strengthening relationships with your customers?

Motivation

 Critical for creating change and sustaining new behaviors. What role do principles of motivation play in building relationships with your customers? Depending on your value proposition – one example of motivation in regards to strengthening customer relationships may be providing customers/users the ability to earn points when they accomplish an incentivized goal or task. Incentive providers such as employers, plan, and family can contribute to encouraging change for a customer/user. Points earned by a customer/user can be converted into buying power that can be spent on products in the marketplace. Points can also be donated to charities tapping into a person’s motivation for promoting goodwill.  You can even reward your most passionate consumers for becoming evangelists.

Monetization

 Knowing what customers value, what customers experience are both critical to any successful business. Knowing how to monetize both your Value Proposition and your Customer Relationships is foundational to sustaining any business model.

 

3rd – How to Measure Healthcare Customer Relationships

We also built a model for helping practitioners measure their healthcare Customer Relationships by outlining various options for metrics in the strategy, process, people, brand, financial, customer and culture domains.

It seems plausible that you should identify and know your Customer Segments before you create products for them.  Once you have products selected specifically for them, you then create winning Experiences through various Channels and Customer Relationships. The flow can be seen visually here.

modelH - Consumer Measurement

  • Customer Segment Development – know your customers, who they are, and what they want, and (most importantly) what they value.
  • Value Proposition Management – create value that your customers can perceive because it effectively solves their jobs-to-be-done.
  • Customer Behavior Management – understand your customers health needs and comprehension so you can directly and indirectly mange them.
  • Customer Experience Management – know how your customers want to experience your products and services and create great engagements for them as they discover, consider, buy and use them.

This section is about measuring Customer Relationship as a business function. In as much, it should be well past the standard call volumes and issue resolutions, and look to something deeper. We must add revenue and cost element into Customer Relationship measures because it is 1) prudent to do for all business functions, and 2) feasible to identify how Customer Relationship both drives revenue and lowers costs.

When Customer Relationships are designed into a business model, they produce these results:

  • A clear alignment of Customer Relationship to the business model and its implementation.
  • A set of Customer Relationships standards incorporated into all Value Propositions and Channels.
  • A defined set of Key Resources organized for consistent execution of the Customer Relationship.
  • A Platform that organizes, automates, and synchronizes Customer Relationships across the model.
  • A set of metrics to measure Revenue generation and Cost containment, as well as health outcomes.

 Customer Relationship Success Indicators

The following measures are across the key dimensions of a company and its business model.

Strategy

A measure indicating how well Customer Relationships are embedded into the corporate strategy.

  • A clearly defined Customer Relationship Management strategy
  • A clearly defined Customer Relationship plan of implementation (change agenda)
  • A defined maturity curve for how Customer Relationship will create value for the company and for the customer
Culture

A measure indicating how much Customer Relationships are emphasized as a critical area of focus by all employees/internal stakeholders.

  • A measure for the organizational effectiveness of Customer Relationship focus
  • A shared executive measure for collaboration on Customer Relationship initiatives
    • Shared measure (connection) with Consumer Experience group
    • Shared measure (connection) with Customer Development/Sales group
    • Shared measure (connection) with Channel Owners
    • A single corporate-wide Customer Relationship measure in the annual company performance group of measures
    • A Customer Relationship dashboard with agreed upon metrics by the senior team and understood by internal stakeholders
Brand

A measure indicating the alignment of Customer Relationships with your company’s brand promise.

  • This needs to be developed after conversation with leadership
People

A measure indicating the development of the roles that lead and drive continuous improvement for the Customer Relationships function.

  • This needs to be developed after conversation with leadership
Process

A measure indicating how clearly understood and utilized the Customer Relationship process is.

  • Feedback loops from providers in place
  • Feedback loops from customers in place
  • This needs to be further developed after conversation with leadership
Financial

A measure indicating the effect that Customer Relationship has on corporate financial performance.
Revenue (attributable to Customer Relationship)

  • This needs to be developed after conversation with leadership

Costs (attributable to Customer Relationship)

  • Cost to Serve Customers (total service and support costs) to meet their job-to-be-done
  • Cost to Satisfy Customers by channel (email, chat, online, telephone, in person)
  • Ratio of Cost to Serve / Total Revenue
Customer

A measure indicating the Customer Relationship and its affect across the customer lifecycle.

Single Measures

  • Customer Satisfaction score (CSAT) score
  • Net Promoter Score (NPS) score
  • Customer Effort Score CES score
  • Reach to Lead Conversion
  • Lead to Customer Conversion
  • Retention Rate
  • Referral Rate

How well do customers listen to you?

  • Call center data (if applicable)
  • Customer Compliance
  • Customer Comprehension of Your Communications

How easy is it for customers to work with you?

  • Speed of application/entry process
  • Speed of issue resolution process
  • Number of Customer Complaints
  • Number of Customer Kudos
  • Customer Satisfaction with Touchpoints

How do customers feel about you?

  • Quality Scores
  • Likelihood to Recommend

What is Next?

Next up, we are going to look at Project 1.11, 12, and 13 – Key Activities, Resources, and Partners.

Interested in what we are doing? Step up to the plate an get involved.

 

To your health,

The Team at imagine.Go