How do you change your customers' motivation and behaviour?

Blue Latitude Health|4^th June 2014

Many of our clients ask us to help them understand how they, as a service provider, can more effectively inform and educate their customers. The end goal is to be able to influence their decision-making process, prompting a change in behaviour which results in better outcomes for their care, wellbeing, and treatment. But how do you successfully motivate the customer to want to change their behaviour?

We know from research that:

• In general, just providing the information, or the rational argument does not guarantee a change for the better in a person’s behaviour.
• Just providing the facts on prevention, intervention, treatment and management of conditions is not enough to change patients’ behaviour.

We all know that smoking kills- it says it on every packet - but people still continue to smoke. To influence behaviour, you must deliver not only the rational message, but the emotional pitch to support behaviour change. The customer has to want to change their own behaviours, by changing how they feel about the situation, they’re more likely to be open to the rationale behind why change is required. By understanding and incorporating theories of decision-making, behaviour change and social influence, we can design more successful services, systems and tools, not just for patients, but also for pharma reps and healthcare professionals.

Blue Latitude Health is currently working with a health and wellbeing services provider to develop services that will transform how their customers engage with healthcare services from prevention, to intervention and treatment. Part of their ethos is to create services that help their customers to change their unhealthy behaviour, initiate good habit formation, and provide the support needed to maintain changes.

This involves understanding and communicating the rational message or the clinical and scientific data that supports the changing of habits and behaviours. But alone this is not good enough- so the design of each service must also look to understand what customers need in terms of an emotional message, the content and context, to actually make behaviour change happen and support its continuation. The result is a service that is custom to the motivation, triggers, habits, barriers of a customer that also takes into account their goals and their context at a point in time. This ensures that when the emotional message is delivered, it actually has resonance with the customer and has an effect on behaviour.

No matter where your customer is in their journey of change, or their context, we can design systems, services and tools that will support and influence behaviour change, as well as help to maintain and reinforce the desired behaviour once it has occurred. If you’d like to discuss how we can help you meet your own challenges, call us on +44 203 328 1840 or email Simon.

For more on effective behaviour change, download the article from Client Lead Natalie Seebeck below.