Listening Is the New Strategy
Part One of a Three Part Series
How you can transform consumer listening into a detailed roadmap for patient access.
It seems a little too obvious for me to point out that hospitals are being forced to think differently about what drives growth these days. But hey, it’s true… times have changed. There are better ways of nurturing growth—and yet, so many marketers still dabble in talking at the market rather than listening to the market.
For too long, hospital marketing teams have focused on visibility. They run service line campaigns, optimizing media, and tracking clicks and calls. All talk, no listening. But guess what… visibility doesn’t equal access. In fact, some of the most visible hospitals out there still lose patients at the very first touchpoint: The phone call.
And when we dig a little deeper, we see that the reason is simple:
Most hospital system executives don’t realize what consumers actually experience when they reach out for care. They don’t hear the pauses, they don’t suffer the transfers, they don’t hear complexity, uncertainty, or the tone of voice that shapes the consumer’s trust in the first few seconds of a call. These hospital leaders assume that processes are working smoothly when, in truth, friction lives in those small details.
At LIFT Healthcare, we’re working with hospitals to demonstrate that the path to improved access and growth begins with listening. Listening to the very people who need to access care, who are required to navigate your front door, and who need a simple experience when accessing your system for care.
A Case for Listening over Talking
Recently, LIFT helped a regional health system take the “listening” leap—deploying a comprehensive consumer engagement research strategy to refine patient access and drive strategies that resulted in measurable improvements in engagement.
Across seven clinical specialties, this system partnered with LIFT to design and deploy a structured initiative to understand what patients and caregivers actually experience when they try to schedule, ask questions, or access care.
The project combined the collection of subjective and objective data, including 1:1 qualitative conversations with targeted stakeholders. The LIFT team also benchmarked key competitors and identified champions of consumer experience—the people and locations setting a standard for empathy, clarity, and efficiency within the system.
The findings were eye-opening.
Even in well-performing service line access points, small inconsistencies and hassles prevailed. Unclear self-pay guidance, long transfer times, and varying levels of confidence or friendliness among frontline staff all shaped the caller’s experience. These issues were not about bad people or broken systems—rather they illuminated various unseen gaps in communication or training that add up to lost trust… and ultimately, lost appointments.
Market-focused listening helped this system see past what quantitative data alone revealed. The hospital learned that accessing care is not just a process—rather accessing care is a foundational aspect of the brand promise.
Putting Insights in Action
When hospitals invest in this type of research, they achieve more than insights that lead to an operational fix—these hospitals fuel a strategic and cultural shift that leads to better experiences and stronger financial performance across the system.
By framing their marketing, patient engagement, and acquisition strategies with an insights-first research approach, we help our clients understand how barriers to consumer access and satisfaction can be understood and then reframed as opportunities for growth in many ways.
• Untangling frustrating and broken phone trees—providing a better experience for the consumer.
• Elevating self-pay & discount awareness—making patients happier and strengthening financial transparency.
• Streamlining and simplifying scheduling—improving the process for the patient and opening up additional capacity.
• Improving call center scripting and energy—nurturing confidence that created a more human connection when patients call on providers.
Together these kinds of changes will elevate the experience a consumer has when they reach out, building trust in the system. And in healthcare, as you know, trust is a key driver of brand satisfaction and organizational growth.
This is what consumer experience research does best—it bridges the gap between what hospitals believe about their brand and what consumers actually experience. It turns real-time stakeholder listening into long-term and measurable change that benefits patients, staff, and the bottom line.
Why This Matters to Your Hospital (and Your Career)
First of all, it matters because as a marketing professional it’s your job to understand the market, create strategies and messages and experiences that move behavior and that fuel a commitment to your brand. This kind of research can serve as a roadmap to the success you seek—elevating your stature as a marketing professional and force multiplier for leadership.
It matters because this is your job—to create messages and experiences that inform success.
Patient access—entering your system at the appropriate level of intervention as frictionless as possible—is where your brand begins. It’s not your logo, it’s not your tagline, or your billboard. It’s the voice that answers the phone; it’s the words, pictures, values, and beliefs that the consumer hears, sees, feels, and relates to. This matters because the clarity of your information, the warmth of your voice, and the success of your first interaction matters.
In a time when competition for patients and market share has never been greater, listening is no longer optional—it’s table stakes and it pays big dividends. Listening to and understanding stakeholders is the very foundation of growth, retention, and relevance for a market-driven healthcare system—especially in a climate where consumers increasingly expect healthcare to feel human, not automated or transactional.
See Your System the Way Patients Do—What Else Matters?
When a hospital system commits to listening, they will find themselves ahead of the competitive power curve. This case study helps us see that when marketing leaders take the time to learn what consumers experience, they unlock valuable insights that data and dashboards alone will never reveal.
At LIFT, we are committed to help health systems uncover these truths through listening. Consumer Experience Research—structured, evidence-based listening that informs strategy, training, and marketing with precision—is now the foundation upon which strategies should be built.
If even one of the challenges presented here—phone navigation, scheduling delays, inconsistent information, detached customer experience—feels familiar to you, we can help. It’s worth knowing the truth—and LIFT can help you uncover that truth by listening.
In our next blog, we will explore what happens after listening. We will look at how one LIFT client leveraged qualitative consumer experience research to put actionable discoveries to work in improving access, inspiring teams, and redefining what great customer experiences feel like.
David McDonald, Co-founder & CEO
As CEO of LIFT and a trained anthropologist, David brings a deep passion for human understanding to every facet of leadership. Blending empathy with innovation and data, he drives empathic, people-centered solutions that elevate the healthcare marketing profession and successful client outcomes.