What if we’ve been going about consumerism all wrong?

Sometimes we make a mistake. Sometimes the mistake makes us.

Doing long division and forgetting to carry the 3 is a mistake.

Our biggest mistakes often come from focusing on the wrong things; like watching the big chase scene in a James Bond movie and wondering what kind of a watch Bond is wearing. (It’s an Omega Seamaster.) We allow ourselves to get distracted from what is going on around us.

Not allowing customers and patients and members to interact with you when and how they want is a distraction.   And it is fatal.

Sometimes success comes from paying attention to the smallest details. Small details can be a deal breaker. I may have mentioned that I am a bit of a clothes hound. Two of my favorite clothiers are Paul Smith and Ted Baker; British designers. What I like about them is their attention to those small details. For example, they line their blazers with an interesting and attention-grabbing silk material. At least one of the button holes is sewn using a bright thread that screams, ‘Pay attention.” They even design the inside of their shoes and line the inside with a fabric comprised of pictures.

Small details help. Unfortunately, when it comes to healthcare, being able to answer the phone and meet a caller’s need is not a small detail. It is a fail-safe point. Miss this detail, and you have lost this person as a patient or member.

Consumerism and commerce without an experience that makes it easy for people to interact with you have a business value of zero. If you define easy as a remarkable experience for every person every time at any time using any device, it is simple to understand just how short your organization falls from the ideal.

I believe the best way to address this problem is by designing a concept I may have just invented; Customer Experience as a Service—CXaaS. If you do this, the other C’s, consumerism and commerce, will fall right in line.

If you don’t, they will simply fall.

Of course, you could keep doing what you are doing today, customer experience as a disservice.   But that hasn’t really worked. Has it?

I came up with the concept of healthcare CXaaS over the weekend—it was a slow weekend. I searched for it on Google and didn’t find anything. That tells me that it has either been tried and failed, or it has never been tried.

An advantage of a CXaaS strategy is that integration and implementation with business partners can be both omnic hannel and immediate.