How to Make Your Senior Living Technology a Revenue Driver
We’re in a golden age of technology. And whether that tech tends toward the functional (smart home devices) or experimental (VR gaming), prospective residents and their families are focusing more on how senior living providers use it.
For senior living communities, the benefits of adopting senior living technology are clear. It can…
- Increase resident engagement.
- Limit staff burnout and reduce turnover.
- Improve resident and family satisfaction.
Each of these results helps communities optimize costs and increase revenue (e.g., the happier the residents, the more likely they are to stay and help bring in new members). But these positive results don’t just happen.
If you want to convert your senior living technology from a cost center to a revenue driver, you need to consider how it impacts your entire community. To aid in that planning process, we’ve highlighted three key steps that can help you increase your ROI.
1. Find the Right Technology for Your Senior Living Community
Want to drive revenue with your senior living technology? First, identify the technology that best fits your community’s needs.
In other words, if you already have a platform that, say, tracks patient health records and makes it easy to coordinate care, you probably don’t need to adopt another one.
Here are two strategies to help you choose the right technology:
- Survey residents and staff. Ask what each group enjoys about your community and what you can improve. See if there’s any overlap. If there is, that could help narrow the list of technology options you’re vetting.
- Conduct a technology audit. Consider whether you have the infrastructure to support technology, like engagement platforms. Think: do you have high-speed internet? How many routers are in your community? Do residents have access to mobile devices?
Remember, the benefits of senior living tech vary by community. There’s no one-size-fits-all platform that increases every community’s engagement tenfold. The goal here is to find a solution that aligns with both your needs and capabilities.
2. Establish a Clear and Thorough Implementation Process
The success of senior living technology often hinges on a community’s implementation of it. To that end, here are some common adoption tactics we see from communities that implement our technology:
- Create a pilot program for residents. Pilot programs are great for two reasons. They forecast resident interest in the technology (if residents are clamoring to join, interest is high). And they help turn residents into champions for the technology.
- Loop in family members to help demystify the technology. It’s daunting to learn new platforms and technologies at any age. When you work with family members to introduce new tech, you’re not just making the resident more comfortable; you’re also getting family members invested in your community.
- Offer recurring training sessions. People learn best through repetition. Plus, this helps ensure every resident – regardless of when they joined – get access to step-by-step instruction. Two ways to deliver this type of training: help organize resident tech committees or bring in volunteers from your larger community (like family members).
Throughout your implementation, and beyond, you’ll also want to rely on data to learn how residents engage with technology.
How many residents use it on a daily or weekly basis? If you sent surveys measuring resident opinions on the technology, what were the responses? Did they change after the pilot program? How about after implementation?
This process is, of course, easier when your senior living technology has built-in reporting. Still, the main focus is this: implementation may only happen once, but training and familiarizing residents with technology should happen year-round.
3. Highlight Your Senior Living Technology Solutions in Sales Outreach
Senior living technology is a massive draw for an increasingly tech-friendly older adult population. So, in conversations with prospective residents, emphasize your community’s technology. Make it a part of your sales strategy.
You might…
- Dedicate email sequences to the benefits of your family engagement platform. Did your community’s net promoter scores (NPS) increase after adopting a family engagement app? If so, mention that!
- Give prospective residents trial accounts to your community’s engagement platform. If a prospective resident wants to know how your platforms work, give them the keys (account info) for a test drive (trial). The benefit: residents see firsthand how intuitive your technology is and how your community embraces it – whether for life enrichment programming or tasks like maintenance requests.
- Share webinars and white papers geared toward senior living technology. Want to make these resources even more impactful? Get marketing on board. Produce your own collateral that speaks to the value of your community’s solutions.
Adopting senior living technology may even change fundamental aspects of your sales strategy.
Let’s say attendance and satisfaction rates grow once you implement an engagement platform. That might be a sign to make technology your competitive advantage. Tinker with taglines and elevator pitches for your sales team. Maybe you’re the go-to community for people that care about technology. Or maybe you’re the community with the best life enrichment programming and highest activity attendance rates.
Residents, families, and caregivers benefit from the technology you implement. Your sales team should, too.
Senior Living Technology Is Both a Growing Expectation and a Differentiator
Every senior living community has a different approach when it comes to technology.
There are communities with medication-dispensing robots. There are communities that use paper-based systems for everything from life enrichment planning to daily check-ins. And there are communities that exist somewhere in the middle.
But one thing remains consistent: over the coming years, more older adults will expect to see senior living technology in their communities. To attract these residents, communities will need to meet – and exceed – older adults’ technological demands. Interested in learning more about how senior living technology can improve the lives of your community members and pad your bottom line? Shoot us a message – we’d love to help!