Nuffield Health transforms its relationships with customers, using Salesforce to show that it cares

The COVID-19 global pandemic, with its many challenges, has underlined that our health and wellbeing is about so much more than physical symptoms.

The lockdowns, the isolation from family, friends, and work colleagues, the loss of freedoms that we take for granted, the fear of the present, and the uncertainty of the future, remind us that feeling well is often the result of many physical, psychological, and emotional factors, all requiring care and attention.

It is this appreciation of the value of taking an holistic approach to health and wellbeing that has established Nuffield Health as one of the UK’s most loved and respected charities, improving the lives of millions of people in the UK every year. 

In addition to 37 award-winning, state of the art hospitals, Nuffield Health’s connected healthcare services also include 113 fitness and wellbeing clubs, featuring traditional gym and swimming facilities, combined with personal training, health assessment and advice, emotional wellbeing services, physiotherapy, and beauty therapy, as well as creche services.

Nuffield Health takes its commitment to helping create a healthier, happier, and stronger nation directly into communities throughout the UK, with its local healthcare clinics and workplace wellbeing services. And its flagship programmes, which aim to broaden access and address unmet needs, have provided free exercise classes for children with cystic fibrosis, pioneering research into the role of exercise in recovery from prostate cancer, and support for recuperation from the effects of COVID-19.

“We have very clear and consistent goals,” explained Nuffield Health’s Head of Customer Relationship Management (CRM), Amanda Webster. “We want to help keep you fit and healthy in both body and mind, with our gyms and health assessments. We want to support you when something goes wrong and you need treatment and medical care at one of our hospitals, and then we want to help you recuperate with services like physiotherapy or hydrotherapy.”

What Nuffield Health knows best is that for its connected healthcare to be most effective, it must bring all of its many complementary services to the attention of its beneficiaries, to enable them to make their own health and wellbeing choices. To help make this happen, it has partnered with Salesforce. 

The Personal touch

“Our main challenge, and opportunity, is to capitalise on the huge volume of data we hold, bringing it together from disparate sources to create one single view of each customer, capturing their history with us in one place, and that place is in Salesforce,” said Webster. 

“This is the key to being able to proactively reach out to our beneficiaries to provide relevant, targeted, and timely information about our services. We want to take them on a journey with us, one that makes it as easy as possible for them to find and access our services, and to have a really good experience along the way.”

The power of CRM 

Nuffield Health was already using the Salesforce Nonprofit Success Pack, along with Sales Cloud, Marketing Cloud, and Tableau, when Amanda Webster joined the organisation as Head of CRM. She’s passionate about the power of CRM as the core digital enabler of successful, data-driven marketing and relationship building. 

Now an increasing number of interactions are being funnelled into Salesforce, providing priceless information about personal interests and preferences, to inform personalised communications and targeted campaigns. 

“Capturing, analysing, and acting upon our data in Salesforce enables us to develop considered, targeted approaches to our beneficiaries, taking them on a connected healthcare journey,” explained Webster. “We know where they are on their journey and, as a result, we can develop contact strategies and personalise our communication, with information and offers that are relevant to their current situation.”

“In doing this, we’re making potentially life changing interventions in people’s lives, offering them a roadmap to improvements in their health and wellbeing. To all of us at Nuffield Health, that’s inspiring and exactly why we work here.” 

Salesforce was at the forefront of Nuffield Health’s response to COVID-19, and its support for the NHS. And, as lockdown eased, the organisation identified that it had a backlog of customers whose health and wellbeing needs had been put on hold while dealing with the pandemic. 

Nuffield Health utilised Marketing Cloud’s Journey Builder, Email Studio, and Social Studio to proactively check on the status of around 65,000 beneficiaries who had –  prior to COVID-19- enquired about medical treatment at a Nuffield Health hospital. 

A simple response mechanism triggered an email open rate of 46%, identifying around 30,000 beneficiaries potentially requiring assistance. This led to a list of  around 5,000 still actively seeking treatment, enabling precise resource management and targeted action to assist those beneficiaries with continuing on their healthcare journey.

In just eight weeks, these Salesforce-enabled interventions generated £400,000 in leads for Nuffield Health’s hospitals – and ensured that 5,000 people had the opportunity to receive life-improving medical attention and services. This included a highly cost-effective Social Studio Facebook campaign for those who could not be reached by the traditional email method.

Staying in touch with Salesforce

“Sometimes people are reticent or nervous about reaching out for help when it comes to their health or wellbeing,” explained Webster. “It’s great to be able to stay in touch in this way, to let them know that we’re there for them if they need us, and that we can make it very easy for them to get the help they need and to improve their health.”

“Now all our open leads are receiving regular contact from us through Salesforce, reminding them of the support and assistance we can provide,” said Webster. “This way our agents know where to focus their energies and how to manage and pursue those leads in a methodical and efficient way.”

“Health is a very personal thing and so it’s important that, at every level, we’re showing the same professionalism, interest, and care in our beneficiaries, as they would expect from a frontline doctor or nurse,” said Webster.

Building relationships for the long term

Salesforce has also been supportive of Nuffield Health’s efforts to understand and address issues that lead customers not to renew their membership.

“We do a lot of work attracting people to come to our fitness and wellbeing centres and our hospitals,” Webster said. “But what about when they decide they don’t want to continue or renew their membership, for example?”

Nuffield Health now uses Marketing Cloud to circulate a leaver survey within 48 hours of the member’s notification of intention to leave. Responses enable Nuffield Health to get an accurate fix on the reasons and trigger personalised actions and offers to continue their membership.

“Previously, when people indicated they wanted to leave, essentially, we just let them go. Salesforce can be hugely significant in helping to understand why they might want to leave and, through various interventions, addressing the issues that have led them to that decision,” Webster said. “The data tells us whether it’s a specific issue at one of our centres that prompted the member to leave or if we have a price point challenge. This enables us to investigate if we’re losing out to a competitor, and if so, why? By addressing those issues, hopefully we can win them back and most importantly address the issue to ensure we provide the best service possible to our customers.”

“So, if you cite losing your job as a reason, we can offer to freeze your membership temporarily, rather than giving it up. It’s great to be able to demonstrate that we care about our members when they need us and to give the business real time data to act upon. Moreover, from a commercial point of view, it’s easier and more cost effective to retain customers rather than winning new ones,” commented Webster.

Value for money

Demonstrating value for money and returns on investment is vital in the charity sector. With Salesforce, Nuffield Health can now measure and report on the effectiveness of marketing activities. Concluded Webster: “If you can’t report on it, how do you know it’s working? How can you calculate value for money and value for beneficiaries?”

“Salesforce enables us to constantly test, learn, adjust, and evolve our activities in response to trends and changes in personal preferences,” Webster said. Tableau has been at the forefront in Nuffield Health hospitals too, providing patient throughput data and reports for both the NHS and private health insurers.”

“I am certain that using Salesforce in this way will pay huge dividends. By reaching out to beneficiaries to understand what’s happening for them, we’re demonstrating that we care about them as individuals. That’s what our reputation is built on and by taking these simple measures, in a timely way, we’re enhancing that reputation,” Webster said.