Unitron, Changing The Future Of Hearing Healthcare

Delivering Collaborative Care and Focused Technology

So, many of you will know I like Unitron as a company, their devices are pretty good but it is their culture and vision that really does it for me. They are the only company that really focuses on supporting their customers for the future. That is a big statement and I am not trying to denigrate any other manufacturer here. Each manufacturer in the industry pours real money into customer support, be it marketing or business development. However, none of them so far have focused on helping customers protect themselves from the future, none but Unitron.

Focused on supporting their customers for the future

This isn’t an infomercial, so I suppose I better get off my ass and qualify that statement before my friends at Widex come around my house and smack me one. Unitron has introduced technology features that allow us to meet the new healthcare consumer. The new healthcare consumer is switched on, they already have technology in their life and they expect technology to help make their life better. They like to have control, in healthcare they like to be a collaborator, not just the dummy who gets told what to do.

The Lies You Are Telling Yourself is Called Cognitive Bias

This new healthcare consumer is here right now, all this stuff you are telling yourself about how your customers aren’t like that is bunkum. How many of you reading this right now are thinking “sure my customers won’t be interested in this type of thing”? That ladies and gentlemen, is called cognitive bias, just because you are a Luddite who is afraid of technology, doesn’t mean that your customers are. More importantly, it doesn’t mean that your future customers will be.

Stop telling yourself lies

Many of your customers right now are chafing at the bit to be involved in a deeper way in their healthcare. Many of your customers right now would like a way to be involved in a deeper manner in the choice of hearing aid technology they should wear. Many of your customers right now are terrified that they will make the wrong choice and spend money on devices that they will be unhappy with and more importantly stuck with. Unitron has considered all of this and delivered technology that will allow you to meet those needs.

Changing How Hearing Aids are Provided

With flex trial, log it all and flex upgrade, Unitron has delivered the technology to change how hearing aids are provided. They help put the focus on collaboration with the customer and evidence based choice of hearing aid technology. They give control to the customer and allow the provider to collaborate with them in a deeper way. The tech delivers evidence from the consumers life, evidence based on their real-time interaction. It allows the provider to really understand in a deeper manner the needs of a consumer. It also allows the provider to reassure the consumer that they are making the right choice and if their needs change, there is a fallback plan with flex upgrade. So that’s:

• Deeper Collaboration
• Deeper understanding of lifestyle needs
• Evidence based choice of hearing aid
• Reassurance that if things change, so can the hearing aid

This ain’t a love letter to Unitron though

What’s not to like?

All of this and more, can be delivered by the technology that Unitron has provided, I haven’t even mentioned the Patient Insights app and how it drives that deeper collaboration and provides real-time feedback to the provider, that is perhaps for another article. However, this isn’t an homage or a love letter to Unitron, they have delivered some pretty amazing technology that allows the process of provision of hearing aids to change. They have delivered technology that will allow us to meet new customers on their terms, however, up to now they haven’t delivered a road map for us to use.

That is a fatal flaw, this tech really falls within a whole new way of thinking, a whole new process for selling hearing aids. However, they haven’t set out that process, they haven’t outlined the nuts and bolts of it. They came up with the tech and just handed it over for us to sort it out, you know that probably wasn’t the brightest idea. Because you know, we are lazy, I mean busy, yeah busy that’s what we are. We don’t necessarily have the time to really think this out, to lay out the strategy to use this technology to step our business up.

Underestimating The Lazy Busy

So Unitron, you need to identify the strategy that needs to be used, identify the process and how it will fit into a busy Practice. Strategize around the who does what when and how that will look in a Practice. Because that is where your strategy is failing, you forgot that no one really likes change even when it is good for them.

In finishing, yes other manufacturers provide support, in fact other manufacturers have provided deep support designed to establish the authority of a Practice (Widex and the Zen Protocols), but no manufacturer other than Unitron has designed technology features that will meet the needs of the modern healthcare consumer. Without being flippant, Practice owners are busy under pressure animals, so Unitron if you are listening, use those big brains to formulate protocols and processes that allow Practice owners to introduce the tech that will establish them as forward thinking healthcare providers.