It is pretty much inarguable that happy customers are a prerequisite for business success. And that’s true in health care as much as it’s true in every other industry—although in health care, sometimes the customer is also called a patient.

Provider organizations like Cleveland Clinic are really walking the walk when it comes to creating amazing patient/customer experiences; so are other leading provider organizations. But in other segments of the health care industry, maybe they haven’t quite connected the dots between the idea of satisfying customer needs in the abstract and then what that actually looks like relative to a strategic approach.

Let me give you an example—certainly not all pharmaceutical manufacturers: Here’s where key performance indicators, or KPIs, come in. Everything we do should really be derived from what customers need and expect. This could be considered our North Star. And that’s why creating KPIs that focus on how well we are doing delivering on great customer experiences over the long run delivers superior market returns and patient outcomes and patient satisfaction.

My guest today on the podcast is Jon Skinner, who is an executive vice president at The Verde Group. Jon’s message is that your KPIs—if they are done right, in any case—should tell you if you are delivering on a set of customer expectations that are going to lead you to your vision of what success looks like. The Verde Group is a market research firm that specializes in quantifying the customer experience, in case you have not heard of them. I met Jon, by the way, at the PanAgora Pharma CX conference this past spring.

You can learn more at verdegroup.com.

Jon Skinner is executive vice president with The Verde Group, a customer experience (CX) research consultancy focusing on the financial quantification of customer experiences. Jon works with market leaders across the pharmaceutical and health care space to help them identify the specific customer experiences most consequential to revenue and share growth, and then to develop CX improvements that sustainably grow customer value, build brand equity, and develop customer-centric cultures.

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