Borough Care
Supporting an innovative care home to deliver services reflective of their users’ needs
Case Study Overview
Strategic partnership work
Social media strategy and management
User experience and customer journey mapping
Services
- Team observation
- Customer Journey Mapping
- User interviews
- Contact form improvements
Their Impact
- Supporting families with loved ones with dementia
- Providing person-centric dementia care
- Empowering older people to live full lives
Meet The Client
Borough Care is a not-for-profit care home provider delivering outstanding dementia care in Stockport and Staffordshire. For over 30 years of experience, Borough Care has empowered older people to live full lives by offering individualised care plans, tailored to every resident. To ensure that every resident is supported to be themselves, Borough Care partners with Stonewall and V for Life, creating an inclusive environment. They are also a Living Wage Employer and part of the Greater Manchester Good Employment Charter.
The Challenge At Hand
Our user experience challenge was split into two core areas. The first goal was to understand more about Borough Care’s staff and how they interact with the organisation. We wanted to know more about their motivations for working at Borough Care, the key barriers they face when engaging with the company and the value that specific roles add to the organisation. The second challenge was improving lead generation and the sales conversion process to grow company revenue.
Our response
In response to our challenge, we delivered on four areas of user experience: role shadowing, customer journey mapping, user interviews and website improvements.
Team observation day
Our user experience work began with a role shadowing day at one of Borough Care’s care homes. For this work, we followed an Activity and Lifestyle Facilitator (ALF) at Borough Care for the day, noting what a day in her life looked like. This work enabled us to see what was involved in the ALF job role, the challenges the ALFs face, and the value that ALFs add to Borough Care.
Following our observation day, we put together an in-depth insights report that collated all of the key findings from the day. This document was then passed over to Borough Care to provide their team with insights from the role shadowing and help them understand their team’s needs. It was also used to inform future organisational decisions and how we created content on behalf of Borough Care.
Customer Journey Mapping
To be sure you’re offering your customers what they need from your organisation, you need to understand how they interact with your brand or service. For our work with Borough Care, this meant carrying out customer journey mapping to know how their audience engaged with their brand.
For this work, we focused on learning more about the steps involved in three core areas of Borough Care:
- How people put their loved ones into a care home
- How people apply for jobs at Borough Care
- How families discover updates and news about their loved ones who are living in care
To begin our customer journey mapping work, we carried out a discovery workshop with key members of the Borough Care team. The workshop focused on gaining insights into our three main areas of interest, helping to inform our work moving forward. With more of an understanding of what was involved in these areas and the types of people that might engage with Borough Care for those reasons, we were able to create customer journey maps for each user.
These maps explored what users might think, feel and do throughout each stage of engaging with Borough Care. After analysing how each user would engage, we identified areas where we could add more value to their experience and the areas where there were gaps in knowledge. Then, we relayed the information back to the Borough Care team.
From this work, we discovered potential areas of improvement to contact forms, care home brochures and overall website changes.
User Interviews
In addition to our customer journey mapping work, we carried out user interviews with members of the Borough Care team. User interviews are semi-structured, conversational interviews that take a relaxed format. Through these interviews, we wanted to discover more about specific processes involved in moving into care, receiving care, and how care home needs assessments work.
We aimed to use the information from these interviews to inform the articles we wrote for their “resources and advice” section. This work also helped influence improvements that we made to contact forms on the Borough Care website.
Contact form and website improvements
In response to our customer journey mapping and user interviews and discovering improvement opportunities, we began implementing changes to Borough Care’s contact forms. A significant discovery from our work was that there were missed opportunities for conversions on the existing contact forms. Here are some examples of the work we did to tackle the issues we discovered.
Contact form changes
We began by reframing the copy in the existing contact forms on their website. Many of the contact forms asked for a lot of personal details and information from the user, which felt unnecessary for what was needed. We reduced the amount of information we asked for in the forms and ensured that the forms were fully compliant with GDPR guidelines.
In addition, we added drop-down menus to the contact forms to highlight the different reasons why someone might want to get in touch, e.g. to book a visit or choose a home. This made it easier for the user to categorise their enquiries and for the Borough Care staff member who manages enquiries.
Website audit
A significant aspect of this work was our website audit. We evaluated the website, spotting opportunities for updating outdated copy and removing unnecessary pages and content. From here, we determined that the admissions page wasn’t performing as well as it could be. We rewrote the content on the page and redesigned the layout to create an intuitive and informative new page that reflected the needs of the user of that page.
Brochure download
There were many missed conversion opportunities due to poor brochure download buttons on their website. We updated the buttons on the website to gain more clicks and downloads, helping to encourage home visit enquiries.
Menu bar changes
The final part of our website improvements was updating the menu bar to make it more intuitive for the audience and their needs. We reformatted the “our homes” section of the menu to split it into Staffordshire and Stockport homes. By doing this, we made it clear which homes were in which area, making the process of moving someone into care much easier for the user.
Outcomes
As a result of our user experience work, we provided Home Managers with more clarity around Borough Care’s website sales processes and gained insights into how their staff feel about their experiences at the organisation. In addition to uncovering important insights from Borough Care’s staff, we were also able to understand their audiences and deepen empathy with their customers. Below are some of the key statistics from our partnership with Borough Care.
2021 – 2022
The following statistics represent outcomes achieved between Jan 1st 2021 and Dec 31st Dec 2022 compared to the previous year.
- Fee downloads increased by 1,296.06% (1,773 vs 127), FAQs downloads increased by 3,654.17% (901 vs 24), and Brochure downloads improved by 3,291.67% (814 vs 24)
- Overall goal completions have improved by 199.36% (14,064 vs 4,698) and the overall goal conversion rate improved by 135.50% (7.51% vs 3.19%)
- Hen Cloud House, Borough Care’s home in Leek, Staffordshire, saw goal completions improve by 341.18% (75 vs 17)
2023
The following statistics represent outcomes achieved between Jan 1st 2023 – June 19th 2023 compared to the previous year.
- Shoemaker Place, Borough Care’s home in Stone, Staffordshire, saw goal completions increase by 16,033.33% (3 vs 484)
- Hen Cloud House, Borough Care’s home in Leek, Staffordshire, saw goal completions improve by 4,542.86% (7 vs 325)
- Fees downloads increased by 232.59% (2,092 vs 629), FAQ downloads increased by 266.30% (674 vs 184), and Home brochure downloaded increased by 15.56% (364 vs 315)
