How one company is simplifying the complex customer journey in aged care

Navigating the journey of moving parents into aged care settings has been notoriously complex and frustrating, even for the savviest of Australians. One company, Aged Care Decisions, is changing the game by simplifying this experience and placing the customer at the heart of their service design.

Co-Founder & Executive Director Ken Ray shares more in this exclusive interview with Matchboard.

What does Aged Care Decisions do, and what market need is it fulfilling?

Aged Care Decisions is Australia’s largest care economy consumer gateway. We assist families looking for advice and support in navigating the aged care space, and match them to providers based on care need, preference and budget. In doing that, we assist care providers by being their sales and marketing engine. For families, we save time, reduce stress and make a complex, emotional process simple. For providers, we reduce time and effort to find the best possible client or resident. As anyone who has been through the aged care journey on behalf of a loved one will know, the process is extremely stressful and emotional. The need often arrives suddenly, and with little warning. Put simply – we help families find a provider they love.

Our service is 100% free to families, with providers paying a set fee to us upon a successful placement – that fee being the same for every provider we work with.

The business was started by myself and my Co-Founder, Andrew Henderson, after our own experiences assisting loved ones navigate and place into aged care. We both found the experience complex and confusing, and knew there had to be a better way for families. After 10 years, we’re still on our journey to assist as many Australian families as possible who are facing this difficult decision-making journey. Aged Care Decisions operates across both the residential aged care (nursing home) sector, and the in home care sector.

How is ACD simplifying the aged care customer experience, which many Australians find overwhelming and complicated?

Our service does two things for families. The first is navigation support. Our incredible team will talk with families and help them understand where they are at, what the next steps involve, and break down the steps into plain English. Our mission is to empower families to make informed decisions. For a significant portion of families we speak with, this is all we do for them. Just being able to speak with an expert who can help you understand the steps involved is an enormous reliever of stress.

If a family is then ready to connect with providers, we match them to providers in their area that have availability. Our matching looks at care need, preference and budget. The output of this is an Options Report – a customised report of appropriate and available matched care options. We collect all of the information providers need to make a quick placement decision, and send electronic referrals out to those providers immediately. Instead of a family having to repeat the same information many times over, each provider gets a snapshot of the care recipients’ clinical needs, care subsidy profile and their individual preferences. The result is providers get a comprehensive insight into the potential care recipient, and can make a quick placement decision. Providers use our Provider Portal to give us detailed information on their service availability and vacancies, the clinical profile of their desired residents or clients. Our system does all the matching.

What is your approach to customer acquisition?

We use a range of online and offline channels to put our service in front of families. Over time, we’ve used all of the traditional digital marketing channels, as well as a range of partnerships with organisations that service our core demographic.

In the last ten years, we’ve assisted over 800,000 families, and we’ve built extensive word-of-mouth referral channels.

We’ve only been able to do this because our approach is built on the notion of ‘service first’. If a family just has a few questions about how to navigate the aged care system, we’ll give that advice as best as we can – even if that’s the extent of support we can assist with. We want every family we speak with to walk away more empowered and informed. If we’ve done that, we’ve done our job.

Over 8,600 families have given us an average rating of 4.7 out of 5 on Trustpilot, and our Google Reviews speak to the depth of personal service and assistance we give to every family.

How does outsourcing fit within your sales and service strategy?

We’re proudly Gold Coast based, and are fortunate to have built an amazing team of nearly 100 from our Southport office. We prefer our team to be office based, because growing like we have means needing to have an agile, fast-moving culture. With over 150,000 families having to face the aged care sector each year, we’ve found that our ability to service that demand is constrained by our (albeit amazing) location. So we’ve chosen to grow our team in other locations in order to ensure we can be available 7 days a week, and into the evening on weekdays.

The decision to scale in other locations was directly related to our desire to service families at a time when they need us. Our core Client Services team are all based in the Gold Coast, with an increasing portion of our back office and support team based in our other locations. We’ve been able to build amazing teams in our other locations – every team member in those locations is as vital and important, and as visible to our team, as if they were sitting opposite us in the Gold Coast.

What advice do you have about making an outsource partnership successful?

The first step is to understand when access to talent is acting as a constraint on your service growth. When you aspire to be ‘world’s best’ in your industry, that means having team members who can meet that challenge.

Beyond that, our approach has been to find a very small number of outsource partners who are 100% culturally aligned – from management down to the individual team members. Acting with empathy, transparency and integrity are non-negotiables for us. We took the time to really get to know potential partners. That means understanding how they act within their own organisation, to their own staff, and to other clients. Getting that understanding takes time and patience.

Outsourcing isn’t about cost reductions – its about unlocking the ability to grow and scale at a pace, and in a way, that suits your business. It’s all about the cultural alignment.

What is your most important KPI to ensure success?

The most important KPI for our partnerships is communication. Any successful partnership must overcome a tonne of hurdles to see that success. Every problem is solvable – if you have the right attitude and approach. The demonstration of that attitude and approach is in how you communicate – how quickly you can address issues in an upfront, honest and positive manner, and how you work through the solution – even if that solution requires a number of iterations. We want partners who want to proactively work with us to tackle hurdles and problems, and equally, come to us with their ideas for how we can be even more successful.