Humanizing Healthcare at Scale

Here’s how combining AI and human connection enables more intelligent listening, personalization, and scalable empathy, transforming patient experiences and building trust at every touchpoint.

Key takeaways

• AI in healthcare is shifting from automation to enabling deeper human connection and trust.

• Smart listening at scale allows for personalized, frictionless care experiences across the patient journey.

 • Proactive empathy and consistent follow-up powered by AI help build more equitable and responsive healthcare systems.

AI is transforming healthcare—but not just in the ways you might expect. While much of the conversation has centered around clinical advancements and administrative automation, perhaps the most powerful opportunity lies in human connection.

Today’s patients and members aren’t just looking for answers—they’re looking to feel seen, heard, and supported. That’s why the future of healthcare experience isn’t just about collecting more data. It’s about listening in smarter ways, understanding people more deeply, and acting in ways that build trust.

At Medallia, we believe that experience is a vital sign. And when paired with a listening approach that is short, modern, and smart, AI can do more than surface feedback—it can deliver personalized understanding, reduce friction, and strengthen trust with every touchpoint. From digital signals to frontline interactions, we help healthcare organizations cut through the noise, act with intention, and deliver care experiences that improve trust and outcomes.

Here’s how AI is helping bring that vision to life across five powerful dimensions:

1. Listening at Scale: Turning Millions of Voices Into a Clear Signal

Healthcare systems today are surrounded by experience data—patient comments, call transcripts, app feedback, social media posts—but without the right tools, most of it remains untapped. Medallia’s AI-enabled signal intelligence platform is built to listen at scale and surface what matters, without overwhelming teams or requiring extensive manual review.

By focusing on concise, relevant prompts and dynamically collecting unstructured feedback, organizations can hear more—while asking less. This kind of modern, intelligent listening enables a clearer understanding of the nuanced populations you serve—whether by region, health status, or access challenges—and allows your teams to act with clarity and care.

Bottom line: You don’t need more feedback—you need better listening.

2. Personalizing the Patient and Member Journey: Built Around Real Lives

Patients don’t experience healthcare in isolated encounters—they experience it as a journey. And each touchpoint—from a billing call to a bedside interaction—contributes to how they feel about their care.

Medallia helps healthcare organizations tailor experiences by listening intelligently and acting precisely. Our AI-enabled platform identifies key signals—like individual preferences, unmet needs, and service friction—across channels and populations.

By embedding these insights into internal workflows, reporting tools, and frontline alerts, teams can take timely, personalized action—from escalating a concern to ensuring the right follow-up. This kind of closed-loop responsiveness helps patients feel seen and supported throughout their journey.

Bottom line: Personalization starts with listening—and becomes powerful when paired with meaningful action.

3. Reducing Friction: Uncovering Moments That Get in the Way

Navigating healthcare can feel harder than managing your health. Friction hides in digital workflows, long wait times, unclear instructions, and moments of poor communication—and patients feel it.

While Medallia doesn’t replace those systems, our AI and real-time signal capture help organizations pinpoint exactly where the friction lives. By analyzing unstructured feedback, call transcripts, abandonment points, and journey bottlenecks, we help healthcare leaders see the barriers that frustrate patients and slow down care.

This insight enables teams to optimize the tools and processes they already use—improving convenience, reducing stress, and creating smoother, more human experiences across channels.

Bottom line: While AI can’t eliminate complexity, but it can help you listen for it—and do something about it.

4. Proactive Empathy: Acting on What’s Felt—Not Just Said

Empathy is often described as walking in someone else’s shoes. But what if AI could help us detect when someone is struggling—before they say a word?

Medallia’s AI can analyze the emotional tone of unstructured feedback, detect frustration in call center interactions, or flag early signs of dissatisfaction in post-visit surveys. This enables real-time routing to care teams, service recovery staff, or patient advocates—ensuring small concerns don’t become major ruptures in trust.

Importantly, our NLP capabilities are trained to recognize disparities, helping you identify whether certain groups consistently receive less empathy or poorer communication. When listening is both proactive and inclusive, the result is not just better service—but more equitable care.

Bottom line: AI can help you see people more clearly—and care for them more completely.

5. Closing the Loop: Consistency That Builds Confidence

Too often, patient feedback disappears into a black box. But what if every voice mattered—and every response led to meaningful action?

Medallia helps healthcare organizations close the loop by surfacing insights in real time and making it easy for the right teams to take timely, personalized action. Whether that’s a frontline staff member reaching out after a service issue, or an experience leader adjusting operations based on trends—the result is a more responsive, trustworthy system.

With modern, streamlined feedback tools embedded at key moments in the care journey, teams can continuously listen without creating added burden—ensuring every patient and member feels heard, acknowledged, and supported.

Bottom line: Following up is where trust is built—and AI makes it scalable.

The Bigger Picture: AI as a Tool for Empathy, Equity, and Impact

Healthcare is at an inflection point. AI is not just a tool for automation—it’s a bridge to better relationships, more equitable systems, and more connected care. But only when it’s guided by human values.

We don’t believe in listening for listening’s sake. We believe in listening that leads to better decisions, clearer communication, and stronger human connection. That’s why our platform is built on a listening philosophy that is simple, relevant, and intelligently designed to enable:

• Fast, actionable signal capture without burden
• Personalized understanding of populations and journeys
• Tailored action that improves trust and outcomes
• Scalable empathy that adapts to both patients and staff
• Transparency and follow-through that earns confidence

AI doesn’t replace human care—it helps you deliver more of it, to more people, in more meaningful ways. That’s the future we’re building with our partners across healthcare.

Let’s make it real. Let’s make it human.