The Impact of User Feedback
User feedback is when a user shares their experience with a company’s service, ranging from positive experiences to negative feedback where there’s room for improvement. User feedback can be collected through surveys, reviews, chat interactions, or numerical ratings. This feedback is beneficial as it allows companies to get direct feedback on how their company is doing and where they can improve.
Like most businesses, healthcare organizations aim to evolve to improve the patient experience constantly. User feedback is a valuable tool all healthcare providers and organizations should consider, as this is one of the best ways to engage with users and improve the patient experience.
Telemedicine is the future of healthcare, and these platforms must regularly adapt to patients’ needs and services. Healthcare organizations can significantly benefit from user feedback on their telehealth platforms, as the user experience is critical to its success. Luckily, telehealth platforms have ample opportunity to collect user feedback and the ability to make updates to the software based on feedback trends.
The Landscape of Telehealth
Telehealth software is designed to house telemedicine visits through a mobile application and allow patients to attend virtual appointments on mobile devices through video conferencing, audio calls, and instant messaging. While telehealth software doesn’t completely replace the need for in-person appointments, it instead serves as an additional route for select medical services. Standard telehealth services include prescription management, healthcare consultations, and mental health services.
Telehealth systems can support patient care by easing the effort taken by patients and their healthcare provider. For example, to avoid frequent in-person visits, patients with chronic conditions can utilize remote monitoring devices to track their vital signs.
Healthcare systems can also use electronic medical records to manage patients’ medical data, granting medical professionals a complete patient history. With this information, patients can experience improved healthcare delivery and a more accurate diagnosis.
There are several components that account for a telehealth app’s success. But let’s take a look at three factors that can make or break a telehealth program.
Patient Outcomes
Patients benefit from telehealth technology, as many of these services are developed around the patient experience. From allowing patients to schedule and manage appointments online to virtual waiting rooms that allow patients to avoid lengthy waits in the office.
While these improve patient expectations, healthcare organizations must measure how telemedicine technology improves patient outcomes. This can be accomplished by gathering data on follow-up appointments and readmission rates, and tracking the accuracy of diagnoses.
Telehealth applications can also provide patients with reputable information on their conditions with a virtual library of scientific literature. Supporting patient education is a simple way to increase patient engagement while giving them more control over their care.
Telehealth Affordability
Telehealth services can allow patients to receive healthcare services at a lower cost for a variety of reasons. The affordability of telehealth services will result in a positive user experience since this is a considerable benefit for most patients.
With telemedicine services, patients have access to a larger pool of providers that accept their insurance and are accepting new patients. Since patients can check in and attend appointments through a mobile device, they don’t have to worry about lengthy wait times or commutes to a physical office. This allows patients not to take time off work, attempt to find child care, or pay for transportation to attend an in-person appointment.
Patient Satisfaction
Patient satisfaction is the primary way healthcare providers and organizations determine if telemedicine is an effective tool for their services. By collecting feedback from patients after appointments to determine the quality of care provided through telemedicine systems, organizations can identify areas of improvement and update the platform accordingly. The more patients are satisfied with the telemedicine app, the more loyal they’ll be to the provider.
Understanding User Feedback
User feedback is a simple and effective tool for companies to gain valuable insight into their services and ways to improve. Here are three reasons why healthcare organizations should conduct a usability evaluation and usability assessment to collect user feedback and increase patient engagement.
Builds User Trust
Collecting feedback from users can build their trust in the organization, primarily if their feedback is acknowledged. Reaching out to users to request feedback makes them feel valued and like their experience was meaningful. When this feedback is done in a public channel, it can show other users that your company prioritizes the user experience and takes a proactive approach to ensure users are heard.
Another benefit to publicly acknowledging feedback in a public channel, and even making updates based on feedback, is a boost to the company’s brand image. Building trust and loyalty as a company brand will give potential users confidence in the customer service and make them more likely to choose that company instead of its competitors.
Performance Feedback
By gathering user feedback across all services provided, companies can use the data to track which services are performing well and which are underperforming. This data can help companies determine what works best for their services and users and make updates.
User feedback can also brew innovation for new ideas or services your company can work on developing. Users can be a reliable source for future services that would benefit a company and be appreciated and utilized by current users.
Identifying Bugs
User feedback is an effective way to be alerted of any bugs or issues with a company’s software or processes. By closely monitoring feedback, companies can quickly identify and resolve any bugs and focus on ways to make processes more efficient. Tracking user feedback will also notify companies of any trends in user frustration, allowing them to make any updates to improve the user experience.
The Relationship Between User Feedback and Telehealth
Telehealth software is a tool for healthcare providers to deliver medical services to patients using a software application. As patients are the users receiving services through this software, their experience is what determines the application’s success. Any feedback provided by patients will provide organizations with insight into how to improve their telehealth app to enhance the user experience.
When developing a telehealth platform’s user interface (UI), development teams will examine how a patient will use and navigate the platform. By building user interfaces that prioritize patients, developers will build a platform that guides patients through their experience with minimal confusion or frustration. However, as the patients and services provided evolve, so will the user experience.
Whenever patients have a negative experience navigating the telehealth app and have the opportunity to provide feedback, the more opportunities an organization has to improve its application. By accepting and reviewing user feedback as a tool to improve a telehealth platform, healthcare organizations will see an increase in patient satisfaction.
The Process of Using User Feedback to Optimize Interfaces
When correctly utilized, user feedback can alert organizations of any bugs or difficulties in their user interface that negatively impact the user experience. UI design is the act of building an interface that allows users to interact with a software product, like a telemedicine platform. During the development process, software development teams will typically design user-centric user interfaces to ensure the users have a positive experience using the application.
Whenever a user runs into an issue with the application, they have the opportunity to provide feedback detailing their experience. If an organization takes user feedback to identify trends and major pain points, then update the software to resolve these issues, then the overall user experience will improve. Making these updates will also improve the app’s overall quality and ensure a positive experience for new users.
Benefits of Feedback-Driven Telehealth Interface Optimization
Telemedicine software is an essential tool for most healthcare organizations and will only become more important as more patients seek out telemedicine services. These platforms will undergo standard software updates as the business and services evolve, but updates influenced by user feedback will help organizations surpass their competitors.
Patient feedback is a valuable tool if organizations want to identify the ideal workflows for their users and the pain points they experience. A process that seemed simple and self-explanatory during the UI design process might actually be confusing to patients using the telehealth app for the first time. By taking in this feedback and making the appropriate changes, healthcare organizations can develop an application that is built for its users’ needs.
As the telehealth market continues to grow, organizations and providers must look for ways to stand out among their peers. By developing an app that is designed based on user feedback, potential patients will see the difference and choose an organization or provider that will make their healthcare experience easier.
Challenges in Using User Feedback for Optimization
Every user has different needs and experiences when it comes to healthcare and technology. Since most patient pools are made up of diverse backgrounds and experience levels, it’s difficult to create a telehealth app that meets everyone’s expectations. While using user feedback to optimize telehealth software interfaces is an ideal scenario for healthcare organizations, the feedback must also be consistent among users for a change to be impactful.
Collecting feedback in a way that allows for aggregation and trend mapping will ensure that any updates made to the telehealth app will be valuable for the most number of users, improving the effectiveness of the platform.
Learn More With Geneca
Is your healthcare organization ready to collect valuable feedback and translate that into interface optimization updates to take your telehealth platform to the next level? Contact Geneca today! We have a team of experts ready to go with experience in the healthcare industry who understand the value of user feedback.