Customer Experience
Today, everything in our world is personal. Consumer expectations for healthcare are no exception. In fact, with health plans viewed as the gateway to health plans, consumers view their relationship with them as deeply personal. There is an even greater expectation by members for personal attention and respectful treatment.
Customer experience for health plans is based on connections that are both individualized and human-forward with four pillars that drive, build, and retain business along the entire customer journey.
Prospect to Member Journey
There are key consumer drivers to choosing a health plan with access, transparency, and cost at the top of the list. Each of those drivers is experienced during key moments of truth along the customer journey: researching, quoting, enrollment, onboarding, billing, customer service, and issue resolution. Developing a prospect engagement plan that nurtures leads and builds customer retention is key net business growth. Retention is often overlooked as fuel for the growth engine. Establishing a strategic imperative in the organization with cross functional teams to determine a test-and-learn strategy is a great starting point.
Humanized Touchpoints
Health plans are far from human friendly. In fact, they are often perceived as villainous brands that are in place to keep consumers from their health care. How do you inject humanity into a villain? By listening, loudly. Visible contact tracing of members’ journeys and member panels will offer great insight as to what feels like an authentic, compassionate interaction – a human-forward connection. Then listen some more and take 30 small steps a year to humanize your plan’s consumer touchpoints.
Personalized Products
Across the board, consumers expect a personalized experience as they research, shop, and buy literally everything. To begin personalizing the products offered by your health plan, follow these 5 steps:
- Spotlight – focus your efforts on the benefits that members use most often.
- Specialize – develop plans that cater to individual conditions, such as diabetes and obesity.
- Supplement – create supplemental offers that allow consumers to customize their insurance, including dental, vision, transportation, and childcare.
- Simplify – when it comes to product names, marketing messages, and benefits materials, speak in simple, everyday language that makes it easy to understand and decide.
- Siphon – analyze product profitability and eliminate underperformers early and often.
Provider Integration
How easy is it for members to use their health benefits in your plan? The best-of-class plans offer a seamless experience between provider and plan with integrated billing, one-touch scheduling, and accurate estimating tools. This type of interoperability spurs loyal brand advocates.
A customer experience growth engine is ignited by full integration of operations, sales, and marketing with the sole purpose of serving the customer’s needs. Rinse and repeat. Then word will spread quickly, converting prospects to members throughout the customer journey.
