One of my clients runs a regional health information exchange (HIE). They have a solid membership base but competition has increased and they realized some members don’t know what made their HIE the best fit.

They came to me because they wanted to communicate their value better.

This is something that clients ask me about a lot. 

It’s trickier than it seems because what you think is the most valuable thing about your company may not be what your customer thinks is the most valuable.

And you need to find out what they think is the most valuable.

For my HIE client, I started with a document dive. That means I went through every piece of customer feedback and commentary that we could find. I looked through testimonials, customer support emails, and survey results.

Then, I arranged to interview several of their members. Now I am naturally conversational but I also made sure to draw them out using carefully crafted open-ended questions.

My last step was to pull all that I’d learned from the documents and the interviews together. I made a values matrix to help me determine the main themes. I was also able to break the results down by membership category, which proved even more informative.

The results were surprising – one of the issues we had expected would be very important to the members was not even in the top three.

By finding that out, I was able to build a new messaging strategy that highlighted the themes the members valued most.

Even better, we had the data to back up the decision. That meant, when my client had to report up the chain to their Board, they could show this wasn’t just a best guess.

If you need help communicating the value of your business, I’d be happy to talk. Click here for a free consultation.

Photo by Markus Winkler on Unsplash