How Tend leverages patient experience design for growth

Let’s break down this statement into some actionable tactics that healthcare business owners can use to grow like Tend. As Doug laid out in his medium post mentioned above, patient experience is about so much more than the feel a patient gets when they walk in the door of your business. 

While arriving for a first appointment is obviously an important moment and one that Tend has spent a lot of effort optimizing, they’ve correctly identified that in today’s digital age, first impressions happen long before that. The patient journey is a long and meandering path, and as research about the patient journey from Google shows us, most people take 2+ weeks to find a provider, performing many searches along the way and interacting with a brand on several different mediums, like a website, social media and reviews sites, before ultimately booking an appointment. Inevitably, most patients will also perform the same deep dive on the digital presence of a competitor as well. An enormous part of Tend’s winning strategy is how good they’ve been in providing a consistent patient experience across all of those digital touchpoints before solidifying those positive experiences when that patient finally does arrive in one of their studios. 

Here’s where they’ve actioned effectively: 

1. Tend is visible when patients want to find a dentist, thanks to a strong digital marketing presence that combines search engine optimization, social media and advertising to great success.
2. Tend grows through a focus on improving “phygital” experiences for patients – physical, in-person care and the digital experiences which lead them there. They’ve done the legwork of putting themselves in the patient’s shoes and actively worked towards improving the places where patients come in contact with their business, online and in-person.
3. Tend cements these positive experiences in patients’ minds through excellent and consistent branding– their website, socials, ads and studios all uniformly communicate the feeling they want to convey. Their attention to brand conveys polished professionalism before a patient even walks through the door or speaks to a member of their team.