5 Steps to Boost Healthcare Customer Engagement Through Seamless Onboarding

Alexa can tell you if you are sick, drones can get you your meds, and your heart surgeon can be a robot.

Healthcare technology is growing rapidly, from the biggest machines in a hospital to a mobile app on your phone.

It is both fascinating and terrifying to think about the possibilities.

But when the healthcare industry is growing and evolving so fast, it is important to consider the customers and users of healthcare apps and technologies and how they are engaging with these healthcare technology solutions.

So, today, let’s talk about:

• What healthcare customer onboarding is,
• What are some challenges in the face of onboarding healthcare consumers,
• Why you need a great onboarding as a healthcare provider or healthcare professional,
• Some cool healthcare customer onboarding examples, and
• How you can boost customer and patient experience via excellent healthcare onboarding

Let’s start with:

What Is Healthcare Customer Onboarding?

Healthcare customer onboarding refers to any form of customer onboarding and any onboarding flow created to offer more personalized experiences or better digital experiences in and out of a healthcare platform or software. Since there is a wide variety of digital solutions for healthcare, customer onboarding for healthcare apps and other software depending more on service than a standalone all-in-one solution might have very different onboarding processes. Still, the most effective onboarding for any healthcare organization or solution is one that engages the customers well and shows them how to make use of the technology most efficiently.

From healthcare HR software to patient care apps, collaboration and communication tools for healthcare workers to blood pressure measurement apps, there are many different online solutions under the name of healthcare solutions.

And when each solution is as unique as each user, onboarding customers to a specific one becomes more cumbersome.

Here are some challenges that healthcare software companies and onboarding specialists run into.

Challenges of onboarding customers in healthcare

1- The use case of the solution

As I just said above, there are so many different types of solutions for healthcare technology.

Your onboarding process might alter a great deal depending on the software in use: a digital tool for medical records of patients and patient satisfaction needs an onboarding flow for doctors.

A platform for health insurance and health plans might require an onboarding process for insurance companies.

A software dedicated to keeping track of archived paper records and employee experience needs an onboarding directed at hospitals and hospital workers.

So, before creating an onboarding flow, it is important to decide the type of product and:

2- The target audience 

You might have realized the important role the target audience plays in deciding the use case of a healthcare tool.

But apart from deciding the type of solution, the target audience also dictates how the onboarding feels and reads.

For example, a mobile app for reminding medication might need to have very simple copy, easy-to-navigate onboarding UX patterns, and lots of images to help ease the cognitive load of users.

Similarly, the onboarding flow on a medical LMS might depend on who is using it:

So, it is important to be aware of the target audience to deliver the most engagement in healthcare software.

3- Cost of onboarding

Another challenge many healthcare organizations and healthcare software companies come across is the cost of onboarding.

As healthcare costs are high enough for solutions who are in the healthcare business themselves, and as the funds are too low for SaaS businesses working on products for healthcare, it is not always possible to come up with a perfectly tailored onboarding flow for healthcare solutions.

But what if you could have a fully-fledged onboarding process with affordable prices?

So now, the challenges of onboarding in healthcare must be clear to you.

But why exactly does it matter that your healthcare customers are properly onboarded?

Let’s take a look.

Why you need a great onboarding process

An onboarding process, small or big, detailed or simple, interactive or not, is a necessity for almost all types of digital solutions and a part of successful customer engagement strategies.

But to be more specific, there are three main reasons why a great onboarding for healthcare is a must.

And it’s the exact same reasons why onboarding for healthcare is a challenge:

1- Different use cases complicate products

The healthcare industry having a variety of tools and solutions developed every day, each product gets more complex, and there is no common understanding of how a specific tool works since each solution tends to be unique.

 So, to help users and customers understand just how a solution can help them, a good onboarding process can help.

2- Target audiences might get difficult

The healthcare industry addresses the general public.

Anyone out there might need medical help and use some sort of healthcare app or platform, though there is a good amount of software specifically designed for healthcare workers.

Still, it is difficult to create one or two customer personas for most healthcare platforms and software; thus, depending on each different tool, a good onboarding can help you distinguish the segments and serve and onboard them accordingly.

3- Good onboarding decreases costs

Though this one is not a special case for healthcare, it is a known fact that a good onboarding helps decrease certain costs, like customer support costs and for complex platforms, onboarding specialist hiring costs.

Given that healthcare and healthcare technology are quite expensive and that some form of onboarding is necessary for almost all digital products under all circumstances, a good onboarding is as important as can be.

Here are some examples from tools and apps that know that very well:

Top 3 Healthcare Customer Onboarding Examples

1- Apple Health – new feature onboarding done right

With the new iOS 16 update, the Apple Health app has introduced a new feature called medications, where users can add medications, their form, shape, size, frequency of intake, and even a fun little profile picture for the med.

Though Apple Health is not necessarily a standalone app as it is a default app on any iPhone, its feature onboarding with a skip button, microcopy to onboard without disrupting the flow, and overall UX makes it a great example for our case.

2- Pepapp – personalized sign-up

Pepapp is a period tracking app with the most to-the-point signup flow:

It is personal, it is fun, it uses a mascot for more engagement, and its signup onboarding flow is no longer than 4-steps.

I call that a win.

3- Cuepath – 72% reduced support tickets

Cuepath is a healthcare solution for senior citizens that does a similar job to the new feature of Apple health, it keeps track of medication and helps caregivers monitor patient daily routines.

Though Cuepath is essentially a very simple solution, as its target audience is not as tech-savvy as a regular user, they needed to use clear onboarding UX patterns like welcome modals:

Hotspots:

And more.

With visual support, short copy, and attention-grabbing elements for onboarding, Cupath does a great job of engaging users with onboarding.

Read up on how Cuepath reduced support calls by 72% with UserGuiding here 👈

Having seen some cool examples, I bet you are ready to find out how YOU can create a great customer onboarding for YOUR healthcare solution.

Let’s take a look.

5 Steps to Boost Customer Engagement Through a Perfect Healthcare Onboarding Experience

Any product’s UX and user engagement can be enhanced through a good customer onboarding flow.

Here are 5 steps that anyone can use to come up with a well-designed onboarding process. 

1- Know your product & users

To create something to enhance a product, two things are crucial:

👉 Knowing the product (how it works, how it looks, what its use case is, how complex it is, etc.)

👉 Knowing the people who use the product (their age, their positions, where they are from, their education level, etc.)

With this information at hand, coming up with an onboarding flow that will define the product and engage the users of the product becomes way easier and more meaningful.

2- Use the right software

Onboarding users digitally might get cumbersome once again at the development stage.

That is if you don’t have the right tools in your shed.

Companies might prefer to go in-house to create an onboarding flow, but in most cases, this means using precious resources like developers’ time, money, and effort in building and maintaining the process regularly.

Using third-party software (like this one here 👀), on the other hand, makes the process more affordable, less time-consuming, and easier to maintain.

3- Find your aha! moments

Any good product has one or more aha! moments that define value its the specific use cases.

For each user segment, these aha! moments can differ, but ideally, each product has one major aha! moment where users perform the main use case of a product. 

In the case of a healthcare product, this can be successfully making an online appointment, setting a medication reminder for the first time, creating employee profiles, or something else, depending on the product.

Once you know your aha! moments, it is time to discover the fastest route to them, one by one.

4- Personalize & customize

An onboarding flow that delivers users to aha! moments quickly and generally creates a sense of capability with the product is good enough.

But is “good enough” good enough for you?

To take it up a notch, you can personalize your onboarding by calling users by their name in-app, adding tasks and onboarding checklists according to their user segment and triggering custom modals directed at them.

And to customize your onboarding flow, you can try creating a mascot, using brand colors, changing the copy according to your brand voice, and adding more steps like congratulation modals or progress indicators all according to your product and brand.

5- Update, optimize, iterate

Lastly, it is time to remember the most important thing about onboarding:

An onboarding process never ends, unless the product it takes place in is no longer updated.

So, be it healthcare products or any other type of customer/user onboarding, you should always:

👉 Update your onboarding elements and patterns,

👉 Optimize the copy, visuals, and locations of the onboarding flows,

👉 Iterate to keep the onboarding cycle moving

Once you’ve decided that your onboarding flow is the perfect one for your brand image, this step might take place in bigger intervals, but it’s important that it’s always active.

To Wrap Up…

Healthcare customer onboarding is, above all else, is a sensitive and important process, since what you do and don’t might affect lives more than most other software.

Though the onboarding requirements are plenty, there is still a way to make your healthcare onboarding digestible, engaging, and even fun.

Hope this article helps you figure it out and come up with the best onboarding flow for your specific use case.

Best of luck!

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Frequently Asked Questions

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What makes a healthcare customer onboarding process good?

A good customer onboarding process for healthcare software must be aware of the specific use case of the product at hand as well as the target audience as there are quite a lot of different healthcare software types and a wide range of user personas from senior citizens to medical doctors.

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What is the best tool to automate healthcare onboarding?

One of the best tools to use for automated healthcare onboarding is UserGuiding as it is one of the easiest and most affordable tools on the market while having many features, powerful analytics, user segmentation and targeting, and high customization options.

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