Important Reasons for Relationship Building in Healthcare

September 1, 2020

Building authentic relationships is truly important in all areas of our lives. We, as humans, need personal connection. When we lead from this perspective, of genuine care and concern, building relationships with potential customers and taking an interest in their world emphasizes customer retention and satisfaction.

When we look at how this relates to the healthcare environment, one thing is certain, it is constantly and rapidly changing with new regulations, new technology and workforce modifications, along with the most recent COVID-19 outbreak. Now more than ever, it is critical to build organizational trust to foster employee and physician engagement, improve patient care, and boost financial performance. Building relationships, whether online or in person, is key to the long-term success of your business.

One major benefit of relationship building is that it helps to create a long-term connection between you and your customers. This personal connection leaves a lasting impression. As a result, your name will always be top of mind when they have a future need or service your company offers. Which in turn means they can also refer someone to you with confidence knowing you will give them the utmost attention and highest quality service.

A large part of my healthcare career has been based around relationship-building, and I have found this to be even more important especially during this shift in the way we work and do business. Although, we are more focused on digital and social media than ever before, our customers still want that human connection regardless of how advanced technology is becoming.

Human connection provides open communication. Understanding and nurturing your customer leads to innovation and new business opportunities. Through such relationships you can end up creating a completely new product or service or improving your current offering to give you a competitive edge. By listening to your client, patient, or customer needs, you uncover things that may not be available in the current market. If you can create a platform where customers can propose required improvements or new ideas, you are enhancing that relationship.

Ensuring that you address your customers concerns as well as providing informative feedback to their issues will create more trust in you and your company and enhance customer loyalty which also leads to referral relationships.

Building authentic relationships leads to loyalty and trust that focuses on customer retention, satisfaction and valuing customers. If you provide a good environment for a positive experience with your customer and then listen to their feedback, you give them that sense of partnership. Customer retention and long-term engagement may be more critical to your company’s success than customer acquisition.

Price becomes less important. Trust is more important than price for today’s consumer. They value transparency and authenticity over price. When we focus on building and nurturing relationships we in turn sell more and upselling and cross selling becomes much easier.

Touching on human emotions is the key to any happy, healthy and long-term relationship. Customers, clients and patients are faced with a variety of choices when it comes to purchasing items or services. In order to stand out from the crowd you need to create a special relationship with each of them.