Goodbye “Engagement” and Welcome “Services”

Isn’t “engagement” what you measure after everything happens? It is one directional - pushing out content and then - hopefully - measuring if that content and programming resonated with residents.

All of the items you provide are services to your residents. Providing services and measuring engagement is like giving different medicines and then asking someone how they feel. Senior Living needs a services platform that enables a 360-degree, bi-directional distribution and consumption of services. Measuring things is a natural byproduct of this. It’s time for a services platform.

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Getting your company from here to there

Your key differentiators for Engagement and Activities.

While “engagement” is a nice concept, and there is no doubt that it is valuable to “engage,” - it is a commodity, and, let’s face it, it doesn’t have a lot of swagger. No potential customer comes to you wondering if there will be “engagement.” It is expected. And for the most part, every community provides great programming with people who care. Tools that help measure engagement should be like having plumbing.

It’s a given. The differentiator isn’t having it. It is how well you do it. And if you think about it, your programming is part of a bigger picture of services you provide residents and their families.

The key is to acknowledge that you are really a service provider. Like any service provider, the customer doesn’t want to know how you manage it; they want results. Every supermarket has the same items generally organized the same way - produce, dairy, and meat around the edges, as well as boxes and cans in the middle aisles. You aren’t surprised when you hear a supermarket has cereal and ice cream. But there are differentiators. It’s how they serve these items - the people they hire, the lighting, the checkout line, the level of convenience and quality of products, and how it’s stocked and staffed…how are you differentiating the services you provide?

As a vendor for Senior Living, we find it interesting that organizations think their programming is their special sauce. We’ve often heard that "people move in here because of our programming.” We don’t buy it. Programming is cereal. The WAY you deliver your programming - the service - is why they are moving in. It's the quality, the staff, and the community's energy. So maybe we are splitting hairs, and that’s what people mean, but the language implies that they think the programs are at the heart of their success - the long list of activities with catchy names. From a consultant's perspective, we would argue that every program, event, and everything else you do is just a service. And there is no difference between the Yoga class and the transportation you make available to your residents. They are all services.

The challenge concerns consistency, culture, and tools that deliver these services. How often have you heard that the Activities are great, but the person who drives the van isn’t - or vice versa? As a business, you cannot have the nature and manner in which you deliver services to be different, relying solely on the individual providing it - or an overwhelmed ED micromanaging everyone to do a good job. Consistency in defining, managing, and measuring your services is the key to scalability and higher profits.

(Spoiler alert: Speak2 is a services platform.)

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Services

How to define your offerings 

Why are we focused on the word “service”? Instead of defining what we think a service is, let us illustrate tasks every senior living provider does, with the preface that we think they are all services.

  1 - Concierge & Transportation
A resident calls the front desk to book a ride to their doctor’s appointment every Friday morning.

  2 - medicine management & Message
A resident calls the front desk to book a ride to their doctor’s appointment every Friday morning.

  3 - Activity
The activities team booked a yoga instructor to visit the community and host a 45-minute session for residents who sign up beforehand.

  4 - Maintenance
A resident has a leaky faucet and wants maintenance to come and fix it.

  5 - Cleaning
A resident with a cat needs their carpet cleaned.

  6 - Food and Dining
A resident wants to pre-order their meal for delivery to their apartment tonight.

Residents aren’t paying rent for an apartment. They pay rent for an apartment in a community that offers services. Otherwise, they would stay at home.

Calling one kind of service “Activities” and another service “Maintenance” and another “Concierge” might make sense for staffing. However, each of these departments ultimately provides services with the same underlying attributes.

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Core Challenge: A Consistent System

Shouldn’t all services be accessible from one place?

Shouldn’t all of the data be interconnected so you can see all requests by all residents at all times for all things? Shouldn’t residents have one place to go, whether it be an app, a web portal, a kiosk, or any other method of making and tracking their requests? Most importantly, shouldn’t staff have one tool to collect, respond to, and communicate about these service requests? And shouldn’t that tool be as modern and efficient as what they have at the local fast food restaurant?

We have yet to hear a client say, "We really like having a different system for each of our departments! We like that there’s no central place to see the information, and no one really wants to know what's happening across our communities. Plus, residents and families don’t want to see all of their statuses in one view”. In fact, we hear the opposite.

Many have been convinced that "integration" is the solution to all of this. In that case, you just have to hire a vendor to do very expensive, ongoing technical integration work to make various unrelated systems work together. We encourage you to go to every other industry that has tried this and spent millions of dollars, only to find that this is a never-ending money pit - outside of minor wins.

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