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"Equinox allows me to spend more time with my patients."

That's how a physician using Stella's Electronic Medical Records (EMR) solution in Abu Dhabi responded when I asked what we could do to improve his experience with the tool so he could spend more quality time with his patients, rather than using the computer to document his examinations.

"Over the course of a 10-minute visit, I spend eight minutes talking and connecting with the patient, and two minutes using the EMR, because I have everything configured, so it is easy to use,” he added.

"You've got to be kidding me, Doc,” I thought. I could not believe my ears. I was so skeptical that I wanted to ask him if he was sure of what he was saying. We all know too well about doctors' love-hate (mostly hate) relationship with EMRs here in the US, so his statement totally caught me off guard. Not what I expected to hear when paying a visit to a few of our clinic customers in the UAE last month.

The Burj Khalifa in Dubai, lit up in the flag of the United Arab Emirates (UAE). It is the world's tallest building, at 829.8 meters.

As technologists and developers, we get enamored with our products. We often get hung up on thinking that we know what is best for our customers in terms of design, feature or workflows. But there is nothing more humbling than to witness your product being used within the full context of its environment, with actual users, their current knowledge of the application, their working spaces and workflows, their facility's operational processes, and so many other things!

So, I learned and was reminded of these precious lessons during these visits:

• It is not always about the product. Yes, the product has to meet clients' business needs, but it's about the whole experience of them working with you as a company, as people helping them solve their problems. We are getting into opportunities because of a severe lack of good customer service from leading competitors, who actually happen to have richer products … Every customer praised our client-facing team about their responsiveness and above-and-beyond attitude. This experience is a in our offering.
• It is not sufficient to "listen" to customers. Most of them praised the Stella team for "listening" to them, but what they were really saying is that we also acted on what they were saying - we implemented those changes or enhancements they requested. We kept our commitments to them. And, best of all, their requests "just show up in the tool" - a testament to the benefit of a cloud-based solution.
• Often, it is the "little things" that matter. In many of these visits, a user wanted clarification on a functionality, did not know how to perform a function or simply was unaware of a feature already existing in the application. A five-minute observation and conversation not only solved the issue for those users; they were very grateful for it and perceived a huge improvement in their usage of the tool with very little effort, increasing product adoption and stickiness. It even led to identifying adjustments in the product that are very small effort-wise for our development team to implement, but which will make the user's life so much easier!
• It is about partnership. I often tell people that we strive to build long-term relationships with our customers (so cliché, right?), but I witnessed it firsthand here. Successful engagements with customers cannot be a simple client-vendor relationship, because things will not be perfect all the time. They will require give and take, from both sides. It will take doing things that are outside of the agreement. It will take making compromises and being patient with one another. It will take trusting each other.

Observing end-users in their setting is an eye-opening experience. We took copious notes, and came back with many great ideas on how to make the user experience even better and smoother for clinicians.

Visiting various departments inside the clinic gave us great perspectives on the needs of different users of the application.

The Stella team clarifying questions from the office staff at the Bianca Medical Center in Al Ain, one of Equinox's very first customers.