Why Do All Age Services Kinda Look the Same?

If I had asked people what they wanted they would have said faster horses.

— Henry Ford, Ford Motor Company

One of the aims of the Aged Care (Living Longer Living Better) Act, passed in 2013, was to bring about more consumer choice and greater control. This in turn led to the Australian Government introducing market-oriented sector reforms that promote consumer choice and competition.

Over the years, the importance of the consumer or customer in our sector is a moot point. This isn’t a phenomenon unique to age services, and providers now have access to digital tools to generate granular customer insights to support their work in developing and refining services that older Australians need.

This obsession on the customer has been thoroughly embraced with concepts and methodologies like human-centred design, service design, customer experience, and the list goes on. We’re told that we need to get closer to the customer, walk in their shoes, and be in-tune to their needs, wants, and aspirations.

Yet, a study by the Melbourne Institute, noted that ongoing sector reforms have led to less quality choices, and that elders and their families find it harder to choose a provider. Taking the Institute’s findings as a whole, ideas such as ‘market failure’ have been suggested.

Still, in light of this focus on the customer, could it be that sector providers are now finding themselves too reliant on other people’s opinions, at the expense of not having a clear vision and point of differentiation?

In a complex sector like ours, where decisions are comprised of sub-optimal options, where it’s hard to be confident about our present operating landscape—perhaps listening to consumers is a ‘safe bet’. However, is crowdsourcing in the name of creative co-design inadvertently leading us down a path of sector homogenisation?

This is an interesting phenomenon. At a time when organisations have access to more customer insights than ever before, elders and their families have less knowledge about providers and services when their time of need arises. To quote Steve Jobs:

“This is a very complicated world, it’s a very noisy world. And we’re not going to get the chance to get people to remember much about us. No company is. So we have to be really clear about what we want them to know about us?”

Add to this, a Forrester report on the cost of losing creativity, noted that the focus on the customer through initiatives like customer experience (CX) has led to brand homogenisation. This makes sense, for example, think of when you use a mobile app, book a flight online, or buy something online, your experience is pretty much the same. 

The decision-making playbook goes as such:

• A prospective age services consumer passively considers what they will need in the future.

• Circumstances trigger a need, which spotlights services in a particular sector category (home care, retirement living, etc).

• Consumer (and their family) actively consider their options, and try to understand the aged care system.

• A decision is made, and committed to.

• Reconsideration of that decision occurs.

When a trigger motivates someone to seek out age services, and your organisation doesn't come to mind, you've failed to define and stakeout a unique position in your market. This is about creating a point of differentiation, and having brand salience. 

What’s interesting to note here is, if providers understand their customers in the present state of play, they invariably end up competing in the same market category, and in the same way. 

This is because, in a mature sector like ours, there is the circular reality that we're drawing on the same knowledge-base. In this regard:

• Customers who are buying the same services and products.

• Sector experts who have been advising on, and/or selling, to this customer base. 

Unfortunately, in this sea of sameness, we like talking about change, but not too many actually want to change.

In such a stay of play, true breakthroughs can't happen. 

By Merlin Kong, Founder and Principal Coach, Youtopient