I aspire to be a Customer Success Manager in HealthTech. I’ve always maintained an interest in this area. In university, I majored in Bioengineering Systems, but never actually got to work in the health tech sector. My university had active involvement in the Cochlear Ear Implant, Spray-On Skin to help burns victims recover quicker and other biotechnology. I hope one day to enter this field.
List of Australian HealthTech Start Ups
Being Aussie, I’m proud of up and coming tech that’s created here, making an impact both locally and internationally. Here’s a few of the players right now making an impact:
- Harrison.ai – using AI to diagnose illnesses/conditions faster
- Eucalyptus – a collection of digital healthcare companies, selling prescriptions and breaking down the barriers between customers and medical options,
- Lumary – Coordinating care management
Industry Considerations
There are a number of considerations to be aware of a Customer Success Manager that directly impact on your role. They are as follows:
- Compliance: there are fewer industries that have more compliance and red tape than health care. It’s been slow to adopt technology because there doesn’t exist any regulations around how an app for example might be a suitable solution for a customer, vs “traditional” medicine. It’s being written as it goes along.
- Legal: when it comes to HealthTech, the worst result is of course, death. As a result, the legal ramifications are huge. Knowing what you can and can’t say is critical. You don’t want to be responsible for a decision that a user made that adversely impacted their health. Therefore, being extremely clear on language, to the extent of saying something verbatim as legal states, is key.
- Ethics: lastly, ethics. Tech can be seen as taking short cuts, which isn’t necessarily a wrong or bad thing in tech. Considering whether the result justifies the means is important, as well as whether the solution is simply being commercialized because it can be, or whether it actually makes sense for the customer to use the solution regularly. Being aware and comfortable with the ethics of the HealthTech solution will make you a better CSM in supporting it.
The Customers
The customers can broadly span two groups:
- Medical Professionals – the doctors, the nurses, the practice managers. Anyone who’s directly responsible for administering care to patients might be the end user. Everyone always says it, but these people are particularly busy. These brave souls have been on the front line since 2020 when COVID first reared its ugly head – and have stayed there since. Will the tech solution actually help them, or will it get in their way? It’s your job as a CSM to make sure it’s the former, not the latter.
- Patients – the sick, the elderly, the disabled. Generally anyone who needs care. Is your solution directly helping the people who need the care? Assuming that this is the case, UX has to be slick and the Customer Experience empathetic, warm and welcoming. Your job as CSM is to help people solve sometimes embarrassing problems and never make them feel discriminated against. You might also be working with medical professionals to do this.
- Both – your solution might be demand and supply side. Working with both will be critical. Understanding the problems on both sides is critical and maintaining empathy of their situations will help you be a better Customer Success Manager.
HealthTech is an up-and-coming field, pursuing the noble area of medicine. Long term, it will enable more patients to be helped with fewer doctors as they leverage technology to assist them. Will you be a part of this movement?