Home Instead Senior Care

The Challenge

Home Instead is a market-leading provider of in-home care services for seniors; a distinction achieved by providing personalized quality care through the industry’s largest network of highly trained CAREGivers. “We have invested a lot of time and resources developing a highly-specialized training curriculum that CAREGivers are required to complete before being assigned to a client,” notes Vicki Castleman, Vice President of Performance Solutions at Home Instead, Inc., franchisor for the Home Instead Senior Care network. The training curriculum, which includes specialized instruction for handling clients with Alzheimer’s and other dementias, is just one of the many ways Home Instead businesses distinguish themselves from their competition.

Home Instead Senior Care businesses know that maintaining a leading position requires the consistent delivery of exceptional care to their clients. To accomplish this goal, Home Instead owners needed an efficient means of collecting candid feedback from both their clients and CAREGivers. “We recognized that delivering a quality experience on a consistent basis is one of the main pillars of our success and essential to our brand image,” says Castleman,

”Our local owners have to be able to monitor that their clients are getting the type of care they expect and that their CAREGivers are comfortable in their role.”

With Home Instead investing heavily in the training of CAREGivers, retaining employees is of critical importance, as is reducing turnover, which can adversely impact a client’s experience. Maintaining the brand’s high standards of care across nearly 650 independently owned and operated franchises in North America further adds to the complexity of the challenge.

The Solution

Listen360’s Net Promoter-based customer feedback and reviews platform initially piqued the interest of the Home Instead, Inc. marketing team, who saw its potential as a tool to help ensure franchised businesses were consistently providing quality care to their clients and to differentiate Home Instead’s services in the marketplace. “We were already getting data from an annual customer satisfaction survey,” says Castleman, “but what we really needed for our franchise network was immediate, actionable, and continuous feedback to ensure that our high standards were being met.” Able to deliver precisely what was needed, Listen360 was rolled out and adopted as both a daily barometer of service performance, as well as, a powerful facilitator of communication, engagement, and loyalty.

Built around the Net Promoter System(NPS®) methodology, Listen360 streamlines the feedback process by asking two simple questions: “On a scale of 0 to 10, how likely are you to recommend us to a friend or colleague?” followed by an open-ended request to share more details. Since NPS® is an open-source methodology, it’s easy to tailor the questions for Home Instead’s intended recipients: clients and CAREGivers. Based on the feedback, Listen360 organizes individuals into three categories: “Promoters” are those who would recommend Home Instead; “Passives” are neutral, and “Detractors” are those with negative feedback. Nightly email summaries and real-time detractor alerts enable Home Instead businesses to take swift action when necessary.

Listen360’s proprietary Voice of the Customer (VOC) text analytics tool automatically scans feedback for keywords about specific likes, dislikes, and concerns, aggregating them into meaningful themes and revealing trends, enabling precise data points to be visually displayed on intuitive dashboards that can be leveraged—as appropriate—throughout the organization.

Setup was easy and the platform provided Home Instead owners with a real-time stream of their client and CAREGiver feedback. Listen360 also made it simple and straightforward for both franchisees and the brand as a whole to quickly filter and prioritize follow-up. Says Castleman,

“We are constantly trying to shape the brand experience for both clients and CAREGivers in ways that differentiate Home Instead from anyone else in our industry—Listen360 provides us with the insights we need to achieve exactly that.”

– Vicki Castleman, VP of Performance Solutions, Home Instead, Inc.

The Results

Using Listen360, Home Instead businesses are now able to respond efficiently and effectively to client and CAREGiver feedback. Recently Home Instead’s Franchise Exchange Council members shared that their use of Listen360 was invaluable to their ongoing success, providing them with essential, actionable data for their respective locations. “Business owners now have access to information they can take action on immediately,” says Castleman, “Listen360 allows local offices to identify areas in need of improvement quickly, track progress made toward goals, successes, and positive trends to be rewarded, recognized, and replicated.

Leveraging Feedback to Ensure Consistent Quality

By gathering responses from both sides of the client-CAREGiver relationship, Home Instead franchise owners know immediately if a service level is falling short of expectations. Their ability to act quickly in response to this data boosts CAREGiver satisfaction and retention and helps ensure clients are receiving quality care that is consistent with the brand’s standards. “Feedback has become a powerful way for our independently owned and operated locations to determine whether there is any deviation from our brand guidelines,” says Castleman. “Local office responses to that feedback also make it clear to both their clients and CAREGivers that Home Instead actively cares about their experience.”

Boosting Online Reputation

Considering the highly personal nature of in-home senior care, maintaining a stellar online reputation is even more critical for organizations like Home Instead. As an added benefit, Listen360 has helped Home Instead businesses boost their online reputation. Listen360 provides a simple and effective means for clients to share their experience on social media and review sites like Google and Yelp or specialized industry review sites like Caring.com. “Everyone wants their loved one to have the best possible care,” says Castleman, “so they want an unbiased account of other people’s experiences. Listen360 amplifies reviews online and in social channels—in our case taking a very personal message to a much broader audience to reinforce that Home Instead businesses deliver that high level of care.”