4 May 2026

Customer Experience in aged care

Are we built to understand our customers, or just to serve them?

About 
Elyssia Clark

As the General Manager of Marketing, Insights and Customer Experience at Benetas, Elyssia Clark brings a wealth of executive experience across healthcare, technology, financial services and consulting, and a keen interest in helping aged care leaders navigate the practical realities of AI adoption. At Benetas, Elyssia has been leading the exploration of early, practical applications of generative AI, from expediting content development and multilingual video explainers to exploring social robotics and virtual voice-based information services, all with a focus on safety, governance and real-world workforce enablement.

Introduction

Aged care has built deep clinical capability over decades, and the regulatory architecture around clinical safety and quality reflects that maturity. However, the consumer-facing side of the business has developed unevenly. Most providers still don't have a dedicated insights function; customer understanding tends to live inside someone's marketing role rather than as a discipline in its own right, and the segmentation, journey mapping, and human-centred design practices that banks, hotels, and other industries treat as standard are still emerging here.

The new Aged Care Act has sharpened the consequences. Advisory bodies, evidence of acting on consumer feedback, partnership with older people — these are now structural requirements, and they assume an underlying capability that many providers are still in the process of building. Sectors with longer consumer-facing histories took twenty years to develop what aged care is now expected to operationalise on a much shorter runway.

I first met Elyssia Clark in a room full of aged care leaders thinking through how to adopt AI responsibly, and she was already further along the practical curve than most — running real experiments inside Benetas, with the governance frameworks to match. Elyssia is one of a small number of executives who have crossed into aged care from those mature consumer-facing sectors. She joined Benetas as General Manager of Customer Experience, Insights and Marketing in October 2022, after four and a half years leading customer insights and strategy at SEEK and earlier work in financial services. At Benetas she built one of the few in-house insights functions in the sector, which now informs marketing, operational improvement, customer segmentation, and long-term strategy.

In this interview, Elyssia talks about what she found when she arrived, how families actually behave when they're navigating the system under pressure, where the rhetoric of choice and personalisation outruns the operational reality, and the one practice from outside aged care she would embed across the sector tomorrow.

Treating "65+" as a single group hides four decades of difference. The 65–74 cohort grew up with personal computing and email; the 85+ cohort largely didn't. Their digital expectations, family structures, health profiles, and decision-making patterns are genuinely different — but most aged care research still groups them together.

Subscribe to my newsletter - tap below ↓

Q&A with Elyssia Clark

Q1: You came into aged care from SEEK and the consumer insights world. When you arrived, what struck you most about how the sector understood (or didn't understand) its customers?

In aged care, there’s a heavy focus on understanding clinical needs (and rightly so), but when it comes to broader measurement and understanding of general customer experiences, there isn’t a great deal of information available. 

In the lead up to joining Benetas (Oct 2022), I did some desktop research to learn more about the needs and attitudes of older people. I found a few  reports, but the number of studies available was far less than I expected. I was surprised to see insights tended to group older people together into one category – usually just called ‘aged 65+’. A group this broad could include people aged anywhere from 65 – 105. I’m sure there’s plenty of variation in what people are thinking, feeling and doing across those ages, but these insights aren’t readily available. 

I get the sense there aren’t too many aged care providers that have their own Insights team/function. It might be something that a Marketer does as part of their job, but is not typically a specialist function within an aged care provider. In other sectors, it’s more common to have a team and a budget dedicated to understanding customer needs. I was lucky to have the opportunity to build an Insights team here at Benetas, which informs nearly everything we do. It guides our marketing activity, helps prioritise customer-focused operational improvements, enables identification of different customer segments, and explores future trends to inform our long-term strategy.

The other reflection I’d make is there is a real focus on reporting complaints. I think there’s as much opportunity to better understand compliments as well – taking the time to understand what’s working well and sharing more broadly.



Q2: The generation now making aged care decisions for their parents grew up with comparison sites, online reviews, and service-level transparency. How are their expectations different from the cohort that came before them? (And, where are providers falling short?)

Not having been in the sector for that long, it’s hard to answer how expectations have changed over generations. The reality is that people are living longer than ever before thanks to some pretty incredible advances in medicine. I heard someone say recently that years ago, if you were 85 or older, heart surgery was not an option, but now, it’s more common. 

There’s far more information available now than ever before to help people understand and make decisions about aged care. I think we underestimate the power of social media and the many online discussions about aged care that are happening daily on Meta and Reddit. Word of mouth isn’t limited to conversation between friends anymore – it can include seeking feedback and recommendations from strangers. 

People are often making decisions in a time of crisis. The need for support can be unexpected (particularly when it comes to admission into residential aged care) and often there’s a role reversal where the child becomes the parent, which can be an adjustment. People are looking for information quickly, so it’s not surprising to see the use of STAR ratings grow over time (check out research from the Catalyst Research group for more details). 

We’re seeing family members (often the oldest daughter) are the ones who are gathering information, fact checking, synthesising, and then presenting recommendations to other family members for the final decision. I fully expect to see more people using Generative AI (GenAI) tools such as ChatGPT, CoPilot, Gemini and Claude to do research for them, so it’s incumbent on aged care providers to think about optimising their website for SEO (search engine optimisation) and GEO/AEO (Generative Engine Optimisation/Answer Engine Optimisation). SEO focuses on rankings on Google searches, while GEO/AEO focuses on ensuring website content is used, cited and trusted by AI models such as ChatGPT, Gemini and Claude. 

Around 70% of primary carers in Australia are women, and adult daughters disproportionately take on the work of researching aged care options for ageing parents. Providers designing for "the customer" without recognising who is actually doing the research, fact-checking, and decision presentation are designing for the wrong person.

Q3: In sectors like financial services or recruitment, personalisation is baseline. Aged care still largely operates on standardised service models. Where do you see the biggest gap between what consumers expect in terms of personalisation and what providers actually deliver?

I think many organisations aim to deliver personalised experiences, but in my experience, even the big banks, telcos, and airlines can struggle to actually do this. 

I suspect many aged care providers would aspire to deliver personalised experiences for their customers, and certainly, under the Act, this is no longer a wish but an expectation. But the reality is there are constraints which we’re all familiar with – limited funding, workforce shortages and growing demand. 

One of the big challenges I think many aged care providers face is our culturally diverse community. At Benetas we invest in recognising and celebrating different backgrounds and cultures. But it’s not always easy – particularly when it comes to communication. It’s interesting hearing about new technologies (such as earbuds which translate conversation in real time) that can start to break down language barriers and lift our ability to personalise experiences.

Many aged care providers are investing more in technology to enable delivery of personalised experiences. We can’t underestimate the importance of data to enable the delivery of personalised experiences. Other sectors have spent years and invested millions of dollars in building a single view of the customer – that is, stitching together data about individual customers across multiple systems to form a real-time, cohesive understanding of that person. But in aged care, it feels like we’re still catching up – fragmented systems abound and there’s still instances of people using paper based records. It can be hard to get one system to talk to another. The more we can use customer data from multiple sources to understand their needs, the greater the chance we can deliver a personalised experience.


Q4: Choice is a word that appears constantly in aged care reform. But from a consumer experience perspective, is the sector actually offering meaningful choice?

I think there’s a lot of discussion in various forums that while consumer choice features heavily in the Act and Strengthened Aged Care Quality Standards, the reality is that consumers don’t actually have choice if they find themselves sitting on a waiting list for assessment or a package, or live in an area which has limited staff available. 

A search on the My Aged Care portal might yield lots of different providers, but there may be limits in terms of how many actually have capacity to deliver services. 

That said, I think there’s growing awareness that older Australians aren’t all the same – they have different preferences, cultural backgrounds, needs and expectations. One small example at Benetas is that we’ve expanded meal choices for all residents, not just those on higher everyday living fee arrangements. It’s a small thing but it shows that choice isn’t a premium add on, it’s a baseline. In our Community Health and Care business, we’ve introduced a new platform which gives clients more control over when their appointments are scheduled, which is the kind of choice they’re used to having with other sectors. 

The opportunity we have is to close the gap between policy intent and the lived experience. Investment in people, process and systems is critical to making this possible. 

Word-of-mouth used to mean asking friends and neighbours. Now it includes asking strangers on Reddit and Facebook groups, and increasingly, asking ChatGPT, Gemini, and Claude. Providers who think their reputation is being shaped in person are missing where most of the conversation now happens. (Screenshot from Reddit)

Q5: When consumers and families are choosing an aged care provider, what information do they actually want — and how well does the sector provide it? From your experience at Benetas, what have you learned about what people are looking for before they make a decision?

When families begin their search for a provider, in most cases they are doing so under pressure, emotionally, medically and logistically. From the outside, it may appear to be a structured process - compare providers, review pricing, explore options. But in reality, families are navigating a system they don’t fully understand, while trying to make the right decision quickly.

I think many providers are doing their best to educate older people and their families about what is a complex aged care system. Certainly lately, at Benetas we’re seeing more calls, longer conversations, and more questions. 

Everybody’s situation is unique, and what information people are looking for can vary. 

Communication is a big factor in people’s decisions. A lot of prospective clients share past experiences with other providers where basic things weren’t communicated well i.e. not knowing when staff were coming, appointment times changing, or calls not being returned. Those little things have a big impact. Since the transition to Support at Home, we’ve also noticed consumers have become more savvy about pricing and are asking more questions about what services cost and the value behind them.

The most common question in residential aged care is “do you have a room available” and then “are you able to care for my mum’s/dad’s/spouses clinical needs”. Ultimately these people are looking for a place where their loved ones will be able to lead a quality life, engaging in lifestyle activities and interacting with other residents. 


Q6: If you could import one practice or principle from outside aged care — from your time at SEEK, or from any other consumer-facing industry — and embed it across the sector tomorrow, what would it be?

If I could bring one thing into aged care from outside the sector, it would be human-centred design — and specifically, the habit of actually including the people you're designing for in the process.

In many industries, this is just how things work. You wouldn't redesign a customer journey or launch a new product without testing it with real users first. But in aged care, we don't always do that. We design things with the best of intentions but often around operational needs or compliance requirements, not around the person receiving care.

What’s interesting is that now, the new Aged Care Act actually requires providers to invite consumers to form advisory bodies, and governing bodies have to consider their feedback when making decisions. The Strengthened Quality Standards talk about acting in partnership with older people. So the regulatory expectation is there but I think we need to go beyond the compliance tick and genuinely embed it in how we work day to day.

I completely appreciate there’s a couple of barriers to doing this. One is time — providers are under so much pressure that consumer input can feel like something extra. The other is the assumption that we already know what people want. Sometimes we do. But sometimes we really don't and we only find out when something doesn't land.

At Benetas, we've been working on integrating this as part of how we work. A recent example — and it's a simple one — is a new guide we created on fees and charges. Instead of just writing it internally and putting it out, we tested it with consumers first. Did the language make sense? Was the structure clear? That one step changed the output significantly and it wasn't expensive or time-consuming. In fact, people loved the idea they were contributing to making the journey easier for others. 

That's what I'd like to see more of – before you launch something, test it with the people it's intended for. Whether it's a piece of communication, a new service, or a change in how things are done, bring the consumer into the room before you get too far down the road.

Testing customer-facing materials with the people they're written for is standard practice in financial services and consumer technology. Elyssia's example — a fees and charges guide tested with consumers before publication — is the kind of small, low-cost step most providers could take tomorrow.

Subscribe to my newsletter - tap below ↓

Closing reflection

Before you launch something, test it with the people it's intended for. That's Elyssia's answer to the final question, and for sectors that have spent decades building consumer-facing capability it sounds standard — you wouldn't redesign a customer journey at SEEK or a major bank without putting it in front of real users first. Elyssia's point is that aged care still mostly designs around operational and compliance requirements, and brings consumers in afterwards if at all. The Act now requires advisory bodies and partnership at the structural level; the harder shift is doing the same thing in everyday work, on small artefacts like a fees and charges guide, before they go out the door.

The work that interests me is happening in the providers who are closing the gap between strategic intent and operational reality deliberately, in small practical ways, rather than waiting for it to close itself. Benetas, on the evidence of this conversation, is one of them.

---

Elyssia posts regularly on LinkedIn about her work at Benetas and her thinking on customer experience, insights, and technology in aged care. Following her on LinkedIn is the easiest way to keep up with her thinking as it develops.