A Resident Engagement Platform Is Only Half of the Story
Living in Orlando I reluctantly get my dose of theme parks. They all have an app. I can see maps, ride wait times, bathrooms, restaurants and every other amenity. But that doesn’t equal great experience. Here is why!
They don’t always update the app when a ride is closed. So you walk there only to realize why the wait time was less than 10 minutes. Or this ride is “under maintenance” and that poor person who has to stand there and tell everyone that walks up to “come back later” man, I feel for them.
Just because there is a kiosk or “grab and go” stand, that does not mean it is open, despite the hours being listed.
The app conveniently does not inform you that too many people already paid for Fast Pass, causing Fast Pass lines to be much longer than anticipated, irking you off that you spent the money you did.
That bathroom you are running to get your kids to, well it is being cleaned and is not available. The restaurant you want to go to actually has a 45 minute wait and is short staffed, so they are only seating half the tables.
I often leave frustrated because it was not what I had in mind when they told me to download the QR code to pleasantly navigate my day
How Does This Relate to Senior Living and Resident Engagement Platforms?
All the features light up our eyes with possibilities and wonder. If you are the person leading the experience you can quickly become courted and love struck by the idea of less paper, less administrative tasks and not having to have the same conversation with each resident over and over again.
You imagine how you can reduce calls at reception that have previously helped you build your tower of post-it notes, each requiring a manual process. This feature alone would give back hours! Printing and passing the daily schedules and menu offerings could actually be a thing of the past. Maybe it is the automated family notifications, the ability to send pictures not using personal cell phones or the flexibility to change an item on the monthly calendar and not have to “cross off” or “white it out”, thereby explaining many times over why it is canceled.
All of this is possible. But what is most important to understand is broken processes do not magically get fixed when you throw them into a digital, app based offering.
What do you mean Sara? Here Are Some Examples…
If “Movie Time” in the theater room does not have good attendance without an app based solution, “Movie Time” that is delivered and visible on an app is not going to have better attendance. People don’t want Movie Time, they want to know what movie you are showing!
If your calendar is lacking, and offerings are not meeting the current need, sprucing them up with some color, cool fonts and easily accessible icons you can add once for the rest of the year will not make your calendar of offerings better. It is simply designed better, but the programming is still the same. The experience is still the same.
Taking a paper resident discovery sheet and turning it into a digital experience via a tablet on the go is a time saver, but you are still capturing the same information. What if the paper process is not the problem? Instead, the questions being asked do not provide you with useful data and insights
Resident engagement platforms do not fix a hiring, training or continuous education problem. Placing an electronic version of a less than desirable move-in process or resident handbook does not make the approach or handbook better, just more accessible, which could actually be a service disaster. If there is not a process to continuously feed the platform with fresh content you may find that your desire to communicate with residents and families actually backfires, and they go silent on you.
If your transportation offering and schedule is not meeting the need now, it will not meet the need just because you give people immediate access to book their own transportation.
If there is a lack of interdepartmental collaboration, strategic planning and communication at the community level, a tool that all staff now have access to will not solve a culture deficit.
Technology does not build culture or fix things, instead it more quickly pushes out and gives more people immediate access to what may actually expose current weaknesses.
Utilizing a robust survey tool in the application to get immediate feedback is absolutely possible, but what is your current process for responding to feedback? If you do not have one, or a vested interest in responding, service recovery and opening up lines of communication, you are only left with frustrated customers who told you what you asked for, but did not hear back from you. After a while they will stop giving feedback because it is not valued, or addressed.
If you have a scheduling gap with your life engagement department and offerings do not occur on evenings and weekends, guess what, the hours of offerings will stay the same. Unless you automate individual, on-demand programs during the gaps. Many people also do not believe that is the solution; to keep residents in front of screens.
Is your spa service or partnership going well? Is it organized, staffed appropriately and well-appointed? If not, promoting ease and the ability to schedule more services will not necessarily deliver the outcome you desire.
If you do not have an insatiable curiosity about who the residents are and their individual journey in senior living, adding a list of interests will not solve the need for a mindset shift.
If we are not updating job descriptions and hiring people with more technology skills and less creative, fun skills then our technology aspirations will only expose their deficit.
Lastly, are you certain your philosophy for well-being is the right one? Are the outcomes you are tracking effective, providing you with insights and data you can or rely on? Are the established programming standards up to date, validated by the most recent evidence-based research?
The Miss
Once all the initial data is entered, calendars created, schedules input, manuals uploaded, resident information collected, dimensions or pillars added, rarely are there significant updates. We are not good at refreshing the initial data dump. It seems too extensive, too much of an overhaul. Yet, dynamic information and ongoing discovery is the goldmine that fuels all other decisions and makes the reporting and analytics come alive!
Where to Start?
Once an engagement platform is selected and implemented, the business and consultative services are needed to streamline implementation, drive adoption and provide ongoing education. However, I would argue that the work done prior to technology implementation is even more important. Not just infrastructure or site visits to look at technical requirements, connectivity and hardware.
Before we talk about digital transformation we must talk about process enhancement. We must accept that change will occur and that change is a good thing. Innovation is dependent on change. There may need to be a new look, a new design, a new approach for the entire customer experience in order to get the most out of your investment in technology.
You may not need a partner to do this, but at ResHub this is our goal. Not to just sell and optimize technology in senior living, rather partner to listen, explore, discover and collectively create the best processes that will turn your engagement platform into something far beyond notifications, updates, pictures and real time community information.
This is exactly why I joined ResHub. To help potential customers understand their opportunities internally before relying on a solution and partnership to do the work for them.
This is what a true partnership looks like when you are selecting a services provider!