This article was written by Jessica Levco, a healthcare freelance writer.

Virtua Health, a non-profit healthcare system in southern New Jersey, has been going through a lot of changes lately. 

Virtua acquired Lourdes Health System and consolidated several of their websites. New teams were onboarded and restructured. But throughout all the changes, the system wanted to showcase that it is still a competitive, regional player with a focused vision on being the trusted choice for personalized healthcare and wellness.  

One way to show this was by actively listening to what patients thought of their website. To get the listening help the marketing team needed, they turned to gSight, a suite of digital improvement tools developed by Greystone.Net and Klein & Partners. One of the tools, an online digital experience survey, pops up on Virtua’s website. Once patients complete the survey, Virtua marketers can see responses in real-time.

Here’s how the tool works:

• First, a website visitor sees a branded pop-up invitation to take the survey.
• After the website visit, the individual takes the short survey.
• Marketers can view a dashboard that shows scores from their peers, benchmark scores and more.
• Marketers see detailed reporting and recommendations from Greystone.Net.

By asking a question as simple as “Why are you here?” the Virtua team has been able to make improvements to the following categories: appointment scheduling, job information and viewing lab results.

In a recent Greystone Backstage Pass webinar, Drew Diskin, Director of Marketing Technology at Virtua Health, said the team uses the analytics from the survey to direct the team into what marketing steps they need to take to enhance the visitor experience.

“Analytics leads to action,” Diskin says. “But it’s not just looking at the data. It’s about re-organizing how our teams are structured, based on what the data is telling us.”

Rob Klein, co-founder of gSight, said the tool isn’t just a typical customer survey. It is a digital experience survey.

“It’s about how people view your brand,” Klein says. “We look at the challenges and pain points. We watch what people are doing. There’s no survey out there that gets every question answered, but this one considers what people are feeling and how they take action on your site.”

One pain point the team saw was their virtual chat option. Visitors complained that their questions weren’t getting answered and that the hours it was available was not conducive to their work schedule.

Diskin and his team worked to change the narrative around the chat feature. They met with the system’s customer service representatives to learn how the chat function worked. As it turned out, there wasn’t a dedicated team of people managing the chat function — it was more of an afterthought or “task” in a workday that often got ignored.  

Now, they’ve created a digital team of four people to answer chat questions as they come in. The conversion rate of chats to appointments went from 50 percent to 89 percent. Also, a small team covers the chat feature 24/7 to answer questions from visitors.

“We want to make access as a way of doing business — not turn it into an issue for patients,” Diskin says. “Now the question is: How do I get it from a conversion rate of 89 percent to 99 percent?”

Diskin thought about his question for a moment, laughed and said, “I’d settle for 95 percent.”

For more information about how gSight can benefit your website visitor experience, please reach out to Melinda McDonald at mmcdonald@greystone.net.