Naming a key product, “Virtual care”
2020 | Head of UX | Commonspirit Health (Formerly Dignity health)
Background
The concept of video visits became the most important service at CommonSpirit Health when the COVID-19 pandemic hit in 2020. Our company had over 150 hospitals and thousands of medical groups who relied on different telehealth services. I lead the effort to find a name and standard for this product.
Lack of a consistent product name had a negative impact on revenue
Cancelling appointments resulted in a drop in revenue, and our enterprise design and marketing scrambled to teach patients about virtual care options so that they can receive the medical help they needed without putting themselves in the danger of other communicable diseases that would potentially be found in a waiting room.
In order to do a proper marketing push for virtual care options to bring revenue numbers back up, I lead the company in a very fast naming exercise so we could proceed with a major marketing push.
What our research revealed about “telehealth”
We were able to gather colloquial terms for these services directly from customers through our user research panel, break down common terms to get to a closer choice for our official product name in five days.
The product name was chosen as “Virtual Care,” with a standard that “virtual visit” could be used synonymously based on grammar and context.
Names with “virtual” & “tele” ranked highest
“Remote” was not rated high for clarity or likability
names with facility descriptors in front received lowest scores
study participant quote
“The word virtual care or virtual visit lets you know that the visit will be over your phone or computer.”
Creating marketing pages using the new name - virtualcare.dignityhealth.org
As a result of the virtual care label, we created a virtual care pages to:
Rank high in search results for the term “Virtual Care” and “Virtual Visit”
Implement natural language query for the first time for the topic of Virtual Care
Create an FAQs about telehealth offerings that could expand beyond just video visits
What I learned from this experience
User research panels are one of the best ways to brainstorm terminology and words early on in the naming process from people of all types of backgrounds.
Revenue-related events are critical moments to gain buy-in from senior leaders toward the impact that iterative and lean design mechanisms can have on the business, making the way for more strategic leadership in the future.
Creating standards for naming should include both internal process (how do we change the name throughout our company) and an external process (how do we announce what we call this feature before we market the product to consumers?)