Challenge
The Clearing team had done a lot of research into what pain patients would need from an online pharmacy, but for months after launch nothing seemed to be working.
Using ethnographic research into chronic pain, Charette worked with the team to develop a new product and a new brand that delivered results.
What we accomplished
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Lowered CAC and increased conversion
Excellent early retention data
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End-to-end experience strategy
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Established product-market fit
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Published in Dove Medical Journal on chronic pain patient profiles
What we made
Brand Strategy: new unique value proposition, brand vision, north star, personality, sales script, service descriptions and more
Comprehensive Design System: a completely new brand system, including tone of voice, illustrations, photo styling and messaging
Digital Product: comprehensive mobile app for video visits and care plan management
Email & SMS Design System: Marketing drips, patient reminders, and medical updates to ensure patients stayed on track and attended their appointments
Target Market Map: market segment categorization, overview descriptions & spend prioritization strategy
Psychographic Customer Profiles: overviews of real people including their mental models, mindsets + jobs to be done.
How we did it
4-week behavioral and psychological study study on chronic pain ethnography, mindsets on medication, doctors and the medical industry
Comprehensive design system, brand strategy & qualitative validation testing with both new and existing patients
Deep dive into the science of chronic pain treatment to craft messaging that resonated
Qualitative brand audit
Competitive analysis
From online pharmacy to doctors who listen
Chronic pain patients need effective, non-opioid medication — as a provider, it meant sense to build a pharmacy that could deliver. For patients, medication alone wasn’t enough.
Charette's helped shift the business strategy, product and brand from asynchronous medication dispensing to whole-person, online telemedicine.
Three big ideas
Treatments are table stakes
Pain care plans are complex — minimize flares by making it easy for patients to stay on track
Credibility looks totally different in this market than anywhere else
1 - Treatments are table stakes
Patients considered new treatment, especially new prescription treatment, the outcome of working with a trusted doctor. Adding a new prescription without a visit felt unsafe and suspicious.
The biggest gap for patients wasn’t medication — it was being taken seriously by the medical industry. They needed a partner and a quarterback for their complex system of care.
We matched the business with patient jobs-to-be done:
Add health coaches to the medical team for goal-setting, empathy and accountability
Accept insurance and medicare to lower costs and avoid comparison with over-the-counter products
Add 1:1 initial visits with empathetic pain doctors who practice reflective listening and validation
Design a conversational growth funnel that demonstrates insight, understanding and compassion
Turn benefits and features of the service into options for how to receive care in the sign-up flow instead of expecting patients to read a whole website
2 - Pain care plans are complex — minimize flares by making it easy for patients to stay on track
Patients are often managing overlapping health conditions and several doctors while trying to track what triggers a flare.
Making matters worse, chronic pain can have memory and cognition impacts which make staying organized even more difficult.
We designed a patient-facing app that:
Used a dynamic, adaptable home screen to organize treatments, appointments and symptom tracking
Centralized communication with in-app chat and video visits
Included easy to use input methods like sliders and text-to-speech to account for the impact of pain
A custom EHR allowed clinicians to scale the Clearing treatment methodology
3 - Credibility looks totally different in this market than anywhere else
Pain patients have been burned by the medical industry — they’re deeply skeptical of anyone who seems too polished or makes grand promises.
We moved the brand from feeling clinical and elite to feeling like a friendly, straight-talking partner.
We made Clearing feel trustworthy by:
Using simple, optimistic illustrations and UGC from real patients instead of polished stock imagery
Moving from a cold, jewel-toned palette to one that was soft and warm
Shifting the brand voice from removed and clinical to colloquial, friendly and affirming
Speaking to patients like real people, no elite language and being honest about unknowns
Demonstrating respect and appreciation for patient knowledge and expertise, treating patients as collaborators in their care
Charette unpacks what the needs of users actually are.
Empathy is nice, but they turn it into real, impactful insights.”
Let’s work together
Clearing went from trickling conversion to flooded funnels and happy, healing patients. Let's see what we can do for you.
FAQ
Not really! We work closely with our clients to build an engagement that fits their needs and their budget.
The range is wide — our engagements run between $25-300k depending on the scope and volume of work.
Yes and you absolutely SHOULD. In fact if we work together, we will strongly recommend you join the sessions with us.Qualitative research is an art form — one we’ve honed for over 20 years.
We find that even for companies who are good about talking with customers, our methodology tends to uncover new and valuable insights.
We know how to get people to really open up and tell us the truth by:
• avoiding leading questions
• reinforcing, synthesizing and following up with compassion and reflective listening
• creating a welcoming, judgement free space where people can relax and say how they really feel
To be honest … we’re never TOTALLY sure — that’s why we always include rounds of testing to check our work.
We do have a pretty good track record though. Our clients tell us we’ve measurably lowered their CAC, increased their conversion rate exponentially and significantly increased retention and LTV.
We’re also happy to build in rounds of quantitative testing if that’s of interest to you.
Ah this is a tough one. The short answer is no, not really.
We’ve tried this approach before — but we’ve found the outcomes of those projects are much less successful in terms of delivering on business goals because we have no control over the quality and depth of the research.
It’s important to us that every client walks away with a beautiful and effective outcome and for us, that means research is a requirement.
