What can healthcare marketers learn from other industries?

Across industries, one truth is consistent: Consumers are vocal, expectations are high, and loyalty is won (or lost) in a matter of moments. In healthcare, we often think our challenges are unique. And while it’s true that issues around compliance, privacy, and clinical complexity set us apart, we’re still competing in the same attention economy. That means the lessons learned from other industries—when applied correctly—can help organizations leapfrog the competition.

At Press Ganey, we’ve been applying insights, takeaways, and best practices from our work with brands in industries that live and die by consumer sentiment—including fast-casual dining and financial services—to reimagine healthcare CX. By unlocking unstructured feedback and improving digital visibility, we’re translating consumer behavior into strategy, helping healthcare organizations attract patients and win their loyalty.

Tacos, testimonials, and trust: Mining feedback for strategic growth

A fast-casual Mexican chain wanted to get sharper with their brand experience. Not just collecting more online reviews, but understanding the “why” behind the stars. Using AI-powered sentiment and topic analysis, they aligned their operational improvements with the categories their customers expected excellence in: speed, ease of ordering, and staff friendliness.

By focusing on their relative category differentiation—and marrying that with consumer sentiment—they invested in areas with the greatest opportunity for impact. The results? In just 90 days:

• Ratings improved from 4.2 to 4.4
• 5-star reviews grew by 32%
• Zero 1-star reviews since implementation 

Now, let’s connect this to healthcare. Imagine a similar feedback loop in an emergency department setting. Across thousands of reviews, themes are often experiential, not clinical, and center around things like long wait times, breakdowns in communication, unclean facilities, poor food service, and so on.

These are fixable issues. But to fix them, we need precision insights, not just aggregate scores. Healthcare organizations using Press Ganey’s review, transparency, and brand intelligence tools can get AI-generated comment summaries and reports that surface both system-wide trends and site-level pain points.

With this intelligence in hand, provider groups can: 

• Target high-volume concerns with focused operational fixes.
• Deploy paid media campaigns to counter outdated narratives.
• Spotlight staff testimonials or walkthrough videos that demonstrate best practices.
• Build trust with their community: “You spoke, we listened, and here’s what we changed.”

Digital visibility in another highly regulated industry: What finance gets right

In another case, a leading financial services firm was facing a common but costly challenge: inaccurate and sparse online listings that made their branches nearly invisible in local search. By auditing and standardizing location data across Google, Bing and Apple, they made it easier for consumers to find and engage with them—especially for high-intent, map-based searches.

The payoff? A 27% increase in new viewers, 25% boost in page views, and ratings that jumped from 3.4 to 4.6.

This maps directly to healthcare’s dual challenge: managing location-level visibility and provider-level credibility.

Consumers today search for "urgent care near me" or "orthopedic specialist Chicago" expecting real-time results, reviews, and relevance. To stand out in search, your facility listings and your provider profiles need to be accurate, current, and highly rated. The good news is even AI engines like Gemini and ChatGPT now prioritize accurate, regularly updated profiles—making it easier for optimized providers to rise to the top.

Here’s how leading health systems are applying this:

• Auditing listings: Locations and providers alike need up-to-date hours, phone numbers, specialties, and appointment links.
• Responding with empathy: Use templated but authentic responses to reviews—especially negative ones.
• Leveraging review insights to guide advertising and community engagement: If reviews say, “parking is a nightmare,” promote valet service. If they highlight great bedside manner, amplify those testimonials across social.

And because healthcare isn’t just a click-to-buy industry, but often a click-to-decide one, the importance of appearing in the Google Map Pack can’t be overstated. Consumers trust what they see first—and if that’s not you, it’s your competitor.

Turning data into differentiation

The common thread across both case studies? These brands activated the feedback they collected. They treated unstructured data as strategic intelligence. They understood that the three “V’s” of experience data—volume, velocity, and variety—are the foundation of modern consumer experience.

In healthcare, we can apply this same thinking:

1. Volume: Tap into every source of patient feedback—reviews, surveys, calls, social posts.
2. Velocity: Move fast on signals. Respond, adapt, and improve before a concerning trend becomes a major reputation issue.
3. Variety: Think beyond HCAHPS and net promoter scores. Layer in online reviews, Google Q&A, social media comments, Reddit threads, and so on.

This is the blueprint for building a smarter, more trusted healthcare brand.

Today’s healthcare consumers expect the same real-time transparency and frictionless experience they get from restaurants and banks. But that’s table stakes.

Organizations that embrace these strategies now—combining text analytics, local listings optimization, and AI-powered feedback loops—are better equipped to build trust and loyalty, and gain a competitive edge in today’s consumer-driven healthcare market.

At Press Ganey, we help health systems translate experience data into action. Let’s talk about how we can do the same for you. Reach out to our consumer and brand experience experts to discuss things further.