DR KHAIRUSY SYAKIRIN HAS-YUN HASHIM

COMMUNICATION AND
CUSTOMER RELATIONS
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MODULE 9
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Healthcare Service Marketing
Customer Relationship Management
Healthcare services marketing
• How to market the healthcare services?
• What are the healthcare services?
• Who are the clients or the potential clients?
• Why do we need to market the healthcare services?
Christian Gronroos, 2000
 Product

Place Marketing Price

VS
Promotion

‘Conventional’ marketing Service marketing

 People – the appearance and behavior of service personnel. People
are the most important defining factor in a service environment: a
service is obviously inseparable from the person providing it, which is
different than in case of a tangible product. For instance, a restaurant is
not only good because of good food, but because of a good service
provided by its staff.

 Physical evidence – everything from the appearance, design, layout

of the service setting, to aspects like brochures, equipment (the
tangible parts of the actually intangible). Since services are
intangible in nature, most service providers aim to incorporate certain
tangible elements into the offering. This enables an enhanced customer
experience. For instance, in a barber shop you usually will find well
designed waiting areas with magazines, sofas etc. To return to the
restaurant example, you may find that restaurants invest quite a lot in
their interior design and decorations to offer a tangible experience to
their customers.

 Process – how the service is delivered, the actual procedures and

flow of activities. The process of service delivery is crucial since it
ensures that the same standard is repeatedly delivered to customers.
For this reason, most companies have something like a service blue
print, lining out the details of the standardized service delivery process.
For example, fast food chains have clearly specified processes for
customer servicing, which may even include standardized phrases.
Healthcare services marketing
INTERNAL MARKETING

When consumers in a national Gallup survey were asked what

‘quality in services’ meant to them, one-third of all responses, the
largest group, cited employee contact skills such as COURTESY,
ATTITUDE or HELPFULNESS.
Healthcare services marketing

….indeed, for service businesses such as health care that are

labor-intensive and demand high levels of personal contact
between the service provider and the customer, no marketing
plan can be considered complete unless it includes strategies for
reaching and winning over its internal customers.
Healthcare services marketing
INTERNAL MARKETING
• Definitions:
• Selling the firm to its employees (Gronroos, 1981)
• Process of ‘attracting, developing, motivating, and retaining qualified
employees through job-products that satisfy their needs (Berry and
Parasuraman, 1991)
• …the application of marketing, human resources management, and
allied theories, techniques, and principles to motivate, mobilize, co-opt,
and manage employees at all levels of the organization to continuously
improve the way they serve external customers and each other.
Effective internal marketing responds to employee needs as it advances
the organization’s mission and goals.
INTERNAL MARKETING = CUSTOMER FOCUSED + EMPLOYEE FOCUSED
(PATIENTS SATISFACTION) (EMPLOYEES SATISFACTION)
Healthcare services marketing
INTERNAL MARKETING = INTERNAL QUALITY

Total Quality Management (TQM)

Continuous Quality Improvement (CQI)
Healthcare services marketing
SERVICE MARKETING

“processes rather than things, with performance more than

physical objects” (Lovelock, 1992)

Service trinity
Marketing-operation-human resources
Healthcare services marketing
EXAMPLE

The emergency-room physician is responsible for producing,

delivering and marketing the service to the patient during the
consultation. If the patient waited too long because the ER was
understaffed, the resulting customer dissatisfaction is a marketing
problem, but one that must be addressed at the operations and
human resources management levels as well.
Healthcare services marketing
SERVICE ENCOUNTER

“the period of time during which a consumer directly interacts

with a service” (Shostack, 1985)
Healthcare services marketing
• Successful external marketing: customer-focused in driving sales
strategy
• Successful internal marketing: employee-focused, with the
ultimate goal of building effective service strategies that serve
external customers
Interactive Marketing

One of the most crucial marketing tasks is the actual

delivery of services to the consumer by the employees.
The success of interactive marketing depends upon the
proper execution of internal and external marketing.

The employees aim at consumer satisfaction, long-term

association and customer retention in interactive
marketing. The image of the company is in the hands of
the employees.

When some business sectors are purely engaged in

intangible products, the others either deal in 100%
tangible products or include both real and intangible
products.

The service industry has immensely evolved in recent

years to provide assistance to the manufacturing industry
and also contribute to the development of the economy.
Healthcare services marketing
• Components of a successful internal marketing:
• Recruit
• Train
• Motivate
• Communicate
• Co-opt
Healthcare services marketing
• Recruit
• Aggressively and creatively
• Select and screen: using the service-orientation index (SOI)
• Train
• Train and socialize
• Bridge language/cultural gaps
• Motivation
• Segment and understand employees
• Listen to internal customers
• Involve, empower and enfranchise
• Get senior management to the front lines
• Foster team spirit
Healthcare services marketing
• Communicate
• Communicate formally and informally
• Co-opt
• Co-opting good employees
• Co-opt is to persuade or lure an opponent to joins own system or party
 Healthcare Service Marketing

Customer Relationship Management

 CRM can be viewed as a strategy for organization to
improve their performance by maintaining a long-term
relationship with customers
Technology

People
CRM in Healthcare industry is viewed on how the
organizations offer the best services for patients and to
retain a good relationship with them. Process

Once customers satisfy with the service perform by the

organization, customer relationship is manageable.

CRM
The factors that will strongly lead to
the success of CRM’s implementation
are top management support,
information technology and
organization culture.
N. Ali, N. F. Habidin, N. H. Jamaludin, N. A. Khaidir, and N. A. Shazali, "Customer relationship management and
organizational performance in Malaysian healthcare industry," International Journal of Advancements in Research
and Technology, vol. 2, pp. 1-5, 2013
 Construct Definitions
Top management Administrators should have leadership

CONSTRUCT DEFINITIONS
Information Technology
Organizational Culture
N. Ali, N. F. Habidin, N. H. Jamaludin, N. A. Khaidir, and N. A. Shazali, "Customer relationship management and
organizational performance in Malaysian healthcare industry," International Journal of Advancements in Research
and Technology, vol. 2, pp. 1-5, 2013
and able to lead the organization by
establishing the vision and efficiently
introducing CRM, which means they
are responsible to develop CRM
strategies, and provides CRM support
mechanisms such as time, working
environment, technology, and
resources.
Information Technology (IT) refers to a
system for acquiring and managing
valuable data from customers
Origin of organizational culture is
accumulated from beliefs,
expectations, attitudes, and common
value of the members involved in
organization
 TOP MANAGEMENT
Top management should have more
knowledge about CRM to ensure that CRM
will be implemented successfully.
ORGANIZATION STRUCTURE
Providers should emphasize cultural values
such as courtesy, empathy and harmony
when delivering medical service to improve
patient satisfaction

INFORMATION TECHNOLOGY
Such as marketing, sales, services, related
aspects to the client, organizational aspects,
information systems (IS), and software for
CRM, Sales Force Automation (SFA), data
warehouse and data mining, help desk,
internet influence, coordinating the CRM
implementation.
Customer relationship
management (CRM)
• Customer relationship management (CRM) is a term that refers
to practices, strategies and technologies that companies use
to manage and analyze customer interactions and data
throughout the customer lifecycle, with the goal of improving
business relationships with customers, assisting in customer
retention and driving sales growth.
Customer relationship
management (CRM) System
• CRM System is defined by Gefen & Ridings, (2002) as "parameter-adjustable software
packages that are intended to integrate and manage all aspects of customer interactions
within the organization, and so considerably improve the ability of the organization to handle
customer service, sales, marketing, online transactions and orders".

• CRM systems are designed to compile information on customers across different channels --
or points of contact between the customer and the company -- which could include the
company's website, telephone, live chat, direct mail, marketing materials and social media.

• CRM systems can also give customer-facing staff detailed information on customers' personal
information, purchase history, buying preferences and concerns.
CRM Software
• CRM software consolidates customer information and
documents into a single CRM database so business users can
more easily access and manage it.
• The other main functions of this software include recording
various customer interactions (over email, phone calls, social
media or other channels, depending on system capabilities),
automating various workflow processes such as tasks, calendars
and alerts, and giving managers the ability to track performance
and productivity based on information logged within the
system.
CRM Software
• Common features of CRM software include:
• Marketing automation: CRM tools with marketing automation capabilities can automate repetitive
tasks to enhance marketing efforts to customers at different points in the lifecycle. For example, as
sales prospects come into the system, the system might automatically send them marketing
materials, typically via email or social media, with the goal of turning a sales lead into a full-fledged
customer.
• Sales force automation: Also known as sales force management, sales force automation is meant to
prevent duplicate efforts between a salesperson and a customer. A CRM system can help achieve
this by automatically tracking all contact and follow-ups between both sides.
• Contact center automation: Designed to reduce tedious aspects of a contact center agent's job,
contact center automation might include pre-recorded audio that assists in customer problem-
solving and information dissemination. Various software tools that integrate with the agent's
desktop tools can handle customer requests in order to cut down the time of calls and simplify
customer service processes.
• Geolocation technology, or location-based services: Some CRM systems include technology that
can create geographic marketing campaigns based on customers' physical locations, sometimes
integrating with popular location-based GPS apps. Geolocation technology can also be used as a
networking or contact management tool in order to find sales prospects based on location.
Customer Relationships
Management Model
• Create a database
• Transactions—This should include a complete purchase
history with accompanying deLails (price paid, SKU,
delivery date).
• Customer Contacts—Today, there is an increasing
number of customer contact points from multiple
channels and contexts. This should not only include sales
calls and service requests, but any customer- or
company initiated contact.
• Descriptive Information—This is for segmentation and
other data analysis purposes.
• Response to Marketing Stimuli—This part of the
information file should contain whether or not the
customer responded to a direct marketing initiative, a
sales contact, or any other direct contact.
Customer Relationships
Management Model
• Analysing the data
• A variety of multivariate statistical methods such as
cluster and discriminant analysis have been used to
group together customers with similar behavioural
patterns and descriptive data which are then used
to develop different product offerings or direct
marketing campaigns.
Customer Relationships
Management Model
• Customer selection
• Given the construction and analysis of the customer
information contained in the database, the next
step is to consider which customers to target with
the firm's marketing programs.
• The results from the analysis can be of various
types. If segmentation-type analyses are performed
on purchasing or related behaviour, the customers
in the most desired segments (e.g., highest
purchasing rates, greatest brand loyally) would
normally be selected first for retention programs.
• Other segments can also be chosen depending
upon additional factors.
Customer Relationships
Management Model
• Customer targeting
• Using channels of communication, such as media,
internet and etc.
Customer Relationships
Management Model
• Relationship marketing
• Customer service
• Loyalty/frequency program
• Customization
• Community
Customer Relationships
Management Model
• Privacy issues
• Simple irritation. This comes mainly from unwanted
e-mails.
• Feelings of violation or "How do they know that
about me?“
• Fear of harm. This could come from browsing X-
rated sites, booking travel that a consumer does not
want others to know about, and so on.
• Nightmarish visions: the IRS, "Big Brother," and
other thoughts.
Customer Relationships
Management Model
• Metrics
• The increased attention paid to CRM means that the
traditional metrics used by managers to measure
the success of their products and services in the
marketplace have to be updated.
• Financial and market-based indicators such as
profitability, market share, and profit margins have
been and will continue to be important.
• However, in a CRM world, increased emphasis is
being placed on developing measures that are
customer-centric and give managers a belter idea of
how their CRM policies and programs are working.