Recently, while attending a grand opening for a healthcare organization, I found myself blissfully lost in the chief operating officer’s storytelling about the power of the organization. He and I were deeply engaged in conversation, and I listened intently as he told one compelling anecdote after another, each chock-full of relevant and useful patient experiences. My first thought was, Wow! How can the marketing team replicate the COO’s patient-centered chronicles in mass media to tell the real story of the company? But the more I thought about it, the more I realized, storytelling alone wouldn’t differentiate the organization.
My point is, to deliver more value, your narrative must be driven by storydoing. When care teams consistently do the stuff that great stories are made of, it trumps storytelling every time. Simply put, patients aren’t satisfied by the experiences you describe, but rather, by the experiences you deliver.
At Dobies Health Marketing, we approach “storydoing” as part of the brand strategy implementation for our clients. We love it when brand ambassadors carry the torch of change and clinical/medical teams rally around new patient touch points because that’s how healthcare organizations create amazingly unique patient experiences and fiercely loyal customers. Those are the stories that will be told and retold throughout the community to friends and family and spread by social media for years to come. From there, using storytelling to unveil the voice of the customer will happen naturally, authentically and effectively.