In the world of healthcare IT, ensuring your customers are well-supported is not a nice-to-have. It’s a strategic imperative. Yet, the journey to creating successful product support strategies is complex. The role of product marketing is often overlooked.
Product marketers bring a deep understanding surrounding healthcare customer personas, the problems they face, and the value they can derive from your products and solutions. As such, they can play a pivotal role in placing the customer experience at the heart of implementation and customer support activities. It’s never just about technology. It’s about delighting customers at every touchpoint.
Here, we explore how strategic product marketing can act as a powerful catalyst for developing successful product support strategies. We also discuss why it’s essential for long-term success.
Strategic Importance of Customer Success
Customer support is a cornerstone of a well-thought-out go-to-market strategy. Mapping a clear pathway for customers to access product support when needed is essential for creating a positive experience. Unfortunately, in the race to launch products, smaller companies often neglect to consider what product support will look like once product commercialization occurs. For example, pilot programs may involve closer relationships, even direct engineering connections. But, this model is unsustainable for broader commercialization.
Product marketing in healthcare sits at the apex of product, sales, and support. As a result, it brings a holistic view of the customer journey. One that can inform the development of comprehensive strategic support plans. But, also one that should help nurture the ongoing customer relationship. This extends across the entire customer lifecycle. That lifecycle includes the first pre-sales impression, through the initial implementation, and continuing with every product upgrade and update.
The Strong Link Between Product Marketing and Product Support
Customer support teams are on the front lines, like sales teams. They often field customer questions about products long after completing implementation. If they’re uninformed or share information that is inconsistent with product messaging being put forth by sales and marketing, it can lead to confusion and frustration by all parties involved.
Product marketing plays a key role anticipating the questions customers might ask. It also encompasses providing product support and implementation teams with the necessary knowledge to address them. Like sales, support teams need non-technical product training. Equipping them with information about product messaging and positioning, the product roadmap, competitive landscapes, and specific customer account details can yield big dividends.
The value of this training is not immediately clear to those who view marketing as “Advertising and PR.” The strategic knowledge product marketers bring helps to keep support teams updated with relevant product and market changes and trends. It can also ensure they can engage in meaningful conversations with customers throughout their journey.
Success Starts with a Smooth Implementation
We’ve all seen the negative consequences of an unsuccessful implementation. For instance, an unhappy customer, organizational distractions, and lasting dissatisfaction. The implementation phase is where the seeds of future business opportunities are sown. A successful implementation leads to a happy customer. This, in turn, sets the stage for the following.
- Reference Site Development. Converting customers into strong reference sites helps to build credibility and drive new business.
- Upselling Opportunities. When an initial implementation goes well, customers are far more likely to consider adding new applications and features to their deployment. This allows you to harvest more value from your existing customer portfolio.
Forward-thinking CEOs are no longer viewing implementations as discrete projects. Rather, they are strategic opportunities to cultivate relationships, build brand strength, and unlock new avenues for revenue growth. Product marketing might not seem directly involved. Yet, it often plays a central role in orchestrating the components required for a comprehensive customer support strategy in context of the go-to-market plan.
Armed with a deep understanding of the customer and their needs, product marketers can guide implementations on both ends, ensuring alignment and success. After all, it’s far easier to enter an implementation with a well-thought-out plan than to scramble to address problems as they arise. Changing a customer’s perception once it’s soured is an uphill battle. Proactive transparency and positivity throughout the implementation and support processes can preemptively address issues, keeping customers satisfied.
Sales Enablement as a Strategic Powerhouse
In healthcare IT, product marketing isn’t about creating flashy campaigns. It’s a strategic enabler for successful product strategies—including product support. Ensuring alignment, knowledge transfer, and proactive planning, product marketing lays the foundation for a seamless customer experience. One that can transform a satisfied customer into an advocate, a supporter into a promoter, and sets the stage for long-term success in a competitive marketplace.
Do you need help crafting a product support strategy that will delight your customers? Our healthcare IT product marketing experts have experience developing go-to-market strategies that ensure you consider the consumer experience across the entire customer journey. Contact us to learn more.
