Breast Cancer Care Head of Digital Jo Wolfe on ‘improving the customer’s journey’ through a personalised digital service

Breast Cancer Care’s Head of Digital Jo Wolfe is leading a customer-focused digital strategy which will launch in February 2017, as she told CIO UK recently when she described her digital app service for users.

In the lead up to the digital launch, Wolfe has been ‘constantly working’ on the ways to improve their customer journey at Breast Cancer Care.

“Although we’re driven by data, we also take time to regularly speak to users and test our new digital products with our audience before we launch, Wolfe said.

A personalised digital strategy, led by Wolfe, has seen a series of tailored welcome emails to help ‘bring people into the charity’ for the website’s products and services.

“Most of our customer service takes place through social media,” she said. We monitor these channels seven days a week and directly reply to any queries through social channels so people can see us as a trustworthy, caring and responsive charity organisation.”

Breast Cancer Care has its own user forum which the Head of Digital Wolfe sees as a great digital tool’ which can ‘tap into the needs for peer to peer support’, by helping nearly one million people who suffer from breast cancer every year.

“If you are experiencing something as life altering as breast cancer you need to connect with other people in the same position to help share the same experiences and tips,” Wolfe said.

The health secretary, Jeremy Hunt, recently announced for the NHS to ‘go paperless’ by 2020 according to the Five Year Forward View, which will ensure a smoother and more efficient patient journey in the healthcare sector.

“It’s great to see the NHS embracing digital now, Wolfe said. “Self-care is a huge theme in the healthcare agenda at the moment, but people need to be supported to find the information and activities to help themselves. That’s where Breast Cancer Care comes in.”

Staff training

The Head of Digital Wolfe will roll out more ‘staff training’ to create a better engagement within the charity organisation to ensure a better customer experience.

“Our staff is our biggest asset to our digital transformation,” she said. “We started a Digital Culture programme a year ago to help educate, inspire and empower all of our staff to make the most of the digital technologies within their roles.”

The digital programme will see staff training at “all levels” while also having greater ‘access to enterprise-level software” in managing the social media, email marketing and website content for different areas of Breast Cancer Care.

Delivering a better customer service

The Head of Digital Wolfe sees her role as developing an IT strategy which can enable a better support service for its users, offering advice for which digital tools can make a technology leader’s workload easier.

“We use Trello to manage digital projects across the organisation, with lots of teams collaborating while sometimes we’ll opt for Basecamp, if it gets more complicated,” she said. “While I can’t wait to get an Amazon Echo to help manage my work and home life in a more integrated way, in reality I’m often taking hand written notes in my Bullet Journal.”

Wolfe sees her role at Breast Cancer Care in maintaining customer engagement being at the “heart” of the charity’s digital strategy; while also ensuring the communication between her and her digital team is “vital” for delivering change at the organisation.

“Digital tool Motivii allows my team to track their motivation and set their focus for the coming week. Slack and WhatsApp promote quick concise messages rather than lengthy emails… allowing a range of apps to be used across mobile devices to promote productivity,“ Wolfe said.

The personalised approach will see Breast Cancer Care enable a better view of the user’s behaviour which will help the user base to grow.

“We are keen to develop a customer service which will cater to a wide audience making it adaptable for several devices. Being the largest support charity for women in the UK who focus on the support aspect, we want to ensure the digital technologies we are delivering and implementing can benefit the people who are suffering from Breast Cancer.”