Health care providers have learned several lessons from the airline industry such as crew resource management, and checklists. That being said, one area in which we do not often seek guidance from those who fly the friendly skies is customer satisfaction. Why not? In the 2014 American Consumer Satisfaction Index (ACSI), airlines were ranked only slightly higher than the following perennial crowd pleasers: subscription television providers and local and federal governments.

Unfortunately, despite the fact that the health care industry is not actively seeking the advice of these colleagues, they do share eerily comparable approaches. A new realization of these similarities came to me a few years back, while watching a documentary on the Boeing 787 Dreamliner. Following a discussion about the new carbon fiber fuselage and other improvements, the scene shifted to the cabin where Blake Emery, Boeing Boeings Chief Differentiation Officer, was leading a reporter on a tour. I listened as he discussed the end-to-end flying experience.

He talked about how people were often anxious and rushed in transit to the airport, and how parking was frequently a hassle at best. He then discussed the other impediments involved in making it from the airport front door to your seat on the plane (confusing signage, security lines, etc.). Lastly, he admitted that once you arrived, the cabin environment was typically anything but inviting.

My mind raced this was the health care experience, just in a different setting. Over the next few days, I kept thinking about the concept, and came up with many more parallels. As it turns out, the experience of flying and seeing a health care provider are incredibly (and regrettably) similar environmentally, and existentially.

Airport gates are virtually identical to clinic and hospital waiting rooms with chairs created by a famous French designer (the Marquis de Sade) and situated to maximize capacity and minimize privacy. The gate desk mirrors the clinic desk in appearance and function a person gives you a number and asks you to sit and wait, and then informs you that the flight/doctor is running late, or sorry, I cant change your reservation/appointment. This person controls your access to the expert behind the door the pilot or the doctor.

Once past the desk, you are likely to be even more apprehensive after all, you have now lost all control over your immediate future, and have placed yourself completely in the hands of the expert. And you may well sit on the tarmac/in the empty exam room for a while before takeoff.

I contacted Blake Emery, and arranged a visit. He was kind enough to both show me a mockup of the Dreamliner cabin, and compare notes. We had to make a decision whether to maximally engage the flyer in the experience of flying, or to maximally distract them, he said. Do you figure out a way to recapture the enjoyment of flying, or put some sort of virtual reality hood on everyones head as soon as they board the plane?

He described how they had used a combination of two techniques Idealized Design as well as a method for understanding the Cultural Archetype that consumers have for flying. I was familiar with Russell Ackoffs Idealized Design concept, but not the latter.

He explained, We worked with Clotaire Rapaille the founder of a technique of extracting the formative impact that products or experiences have had on people, often at a young age. Rapaille calls these cultural archetypes, or hidden codes.

Some archetypal experiences are good, and some are not. The thing is that if the common archetype is negative for your product or service, you need to somehow offset that if its positive, you need to capitalize on it.

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