A hospital buys an imaging system once. It deals with the manufacturer’s service team for the next ten years. That second relationship is where loyalty is won or lost, and most MedTech manufacturers can’t see it clearly once it leaves head office.
The service offer is designed centrally: one contract structure, one response-time promise, one escalation process. Delivery is another matter. It runs through regional teams, local subsidiaries and, in many markets, third-party distributors. Each one handles the enquiry, the quote and the spare part in its own way.
Service is now part of the product
A January 2026 article from McKinsey’s Life Sciences practice sets out how far the balance has shifted.
- Hospital procurement teams weigh service roughly level with features and performance, behind only reliability. A strong product does not make up for poor service.
- When choosing a service contract, buyers put the overall value and the supplier’s delivery record well ahead of price.
- Customers on paid service contracts are more satisfied, more loyal and buy more consumables than those without.
- Service-focused manufacturers earn up to 35% of revenue from services. McKinsey links a 10 to 20% rise in customer satisfaction to revenue growth of around 32%.
- Independent service organisations are consolidating fast and are expected to grow at about 12% a year in the US to 2029. They are bidding for the same contracts.
The message is simple. In MedTech, service is no longer an after-sales cost. It is part of what the customer is buying, and part of why they renew.
The gap head office can’t see
McKinsey is clear that inconsistent delivery damages credibility. Customers who hear conflicting policies or advice lose trust in the whole offer. Its remedies are internal: a better delivery model, AI-assisted scheduling and troubleshooting, clearer escalation paths. All sensible.
None of them tells you whether it is working in Lyon, Lagos or Leeds. A ticketing system records when a case was closed, not how many times the hospital engineer had to chase. Satisfaction surveys reach the customers who stayed in the process, not the ones who gave up. In distributor markets you see the distributor’s report, not the hospital’s experience.
These are execution questions, not sentiment questions. The only reliable way to answer them is to go through the journey as a customer would.
The service is designed once. It is delivered differently in every market.
What to check, market by market
- Enquiry to quote. How fast does a service contract or upgrade enquiry get a clear, accurate quote, and does it match your central contract tiers?
- Policy consistency. Do local teams and distributors give the same answers on coverage, uptime guarantees, loan equipment and end-of-life support?
- Reaching the right person. Can a hospital engineer get to a technical specialist, or are they passed between call centre, distributor and regional office?
- Escalation. Is there a clear path, and does it work without the customer starting again?
- Digital and remote support. Do the portal, remote diagnostics and status updates work as promised, in the local language?
- Spare parts. Are lead times quoted honestly and consistently?
- Competitor benchmark. How do rival manufacturers and independent service organisations handle the same enquiry?
One contract, thirteen experiences
Consider a European diagnostic imaging manufacturer. It sells direct in five markets and through distributors in eight more. Its central reports show response-time targets met everywhere.
A structured audit of the enquiry journey, covering service contract quotes, upgrade requests and parts questions, tells a different story. Two distributors are still quoting contract terms withdrawn the previous year. In one market, enquiries in the local language wait a week for a reply while English ones are answered the same day. In another, an independent service organisation answers faster, with a clearer offer, than the manufacturer’s own team.
None of it shows in the reports, because the system only starts counting once a case is opened. These customers never got that far.
This is an illustrative scenario based on common findings, not a specific client engagement.
Doing this properly in healthcare
Mystery shopping near a clinical setting needs care. We never simulate equipment faults, tie up clinical support lines or do anything that could delay patient care.
The work focuses on the commercial and administrative journey: service contract enquiries, quotations, upgrade and parts requests, distributor responsiveness, and website and portal journeys. Where the live fault journey needs testing, we do it with the manufacturer’s knowledge, using agreed test accounts, or through structured interviews with hospital engineers and procurement teams. Every scenario is designed to be lawful, ethical and proportionate in each market.
Where this usually goes wrong
Manufacturers assume one contract means one experience. It rarely does. Distributor agreements say one thing and local practice another. Language, staffing and local priorities all pull delivery away from the standard, and none of it reaches a global dashboard.
If McKinsey is right that buyers now weigh delivery record above price, that gap costs renewals, not just goodwill. It is also exactly where an independent service organisation will look for an opening.
If you sell and service medical equipment across several markets, a pilot audit in one or two of them is a low-risk way to find out what your customers are really getting. Discuss your project.
Source: McKinsey & Company, Capturing value from customer-centric medtech services, January 2026.
