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Customer experience - It isn't just for your call center

Dennis Bolin, Health Plan Alliance

11/28/2016

 

My first introduction to community-based health plans was when I was hired as vice president of customer service for a 250,000 member health plan owned by a dominate delivery system.  

I worked for the system for several years in strategic planning and my background was in marketing.  To be honest, I was surprised when they asked me to take on the customer service function. I asked the health plan president, “why me?” and her response was, “ I need someone that doesn’t get hung up on operations and why we do what we do, someone who can translate what customers are saying to the operations folks.” I thought that was a good description of what I wanted the job to be. It was one of the best jobs I have had in my career.

A couple of weeks ago, Alliance members came together at the Customer Experience Value Visit to discuss the gap between what customers expect and what customers say they are getting from us. 
 
 

The Challenge

The biggest challenge that arose from the discussions at the Customer Experience meeting was: How do we communicate to the entire organization – sometimes even top management – that customer experience is an enterprise-wide endeavor? 

It’s not a challenge that’s unique to healthcare; but, we’re also not all so lucky to have Tony Hsieh as our CEO.

“If we’re serious about building our brand to be about the very best customer service and customer experience; then customer service shouldn’t just be a department – it should be the entire company.”
- Tony Hsieh, CEO, Zappos

  

The following are three resources that were shared at the Customer Experience Value Visit to help health plans address this challenge:


Article: Being Human is Good Business by Kristin Smaby
Read the article
“When customers share their story, they’re not just sharing pain points. They’re actually teaching you how to make your product, service and business better.  Your customer service organization should be designed to efficiently communicate those issues.”

SelectHealth Customer Service Engagement Strategy presented by J.J. Richins
Download
This was just one of 13 case studies discussed during the meeting, but there were several elements of this strategy that stood out to me:


  • They defined a vision: To create a consistent, integrated, superior service experience for all of our customer interactions – whether in person, by phone, web, or materials.

  • They defined the customer (which can generate a lot of discussion): A party that purchases products or services from your organization. Often times, the party has the ability to choose your organization’s products from alternative offerings made available to them from other carriers. 
  • They defined their primary customers:
  • Members and individual purchasers
  • Employers
  • Government agencies
  • They defined their key pillars to be a successful “customer company”: 
  • Customer centric culture
  • Employee engagement
  • Availability:  Access to care and information 24/7
  • Customer personalization and connected experience
  • Transparency: Cost, quality, and serviceTechnology investment: Maximize value to customers
Their second pillar – employee engagement – deserves more attention.  Employees embody the vision, mission and values of the organization and it is critical they know their value to the organization and the role they play and see the difference they can make.

 

The Power of Co-creation Case Study presented by Penny Ransom, Network Health and Brian Walker, AE Marketing Group
Download
In this case study, Network Health shared how they put the role of employees front and center in delivering on the promise of superior customer.  To help employees understand the critical nature of their jobs, they featured them in a series of videos.

 

I’ve got 99 problems, but loving my job isn’t one
Back when I ran a customer service center folks would ask me how I could possibly handle dealing with problems all day. I enjoyed doing it because it made a difference in peoples’ lives. A simple “thank you” from someone we helped made my day. It is good to be reminded why we do what we do and the difference we each can make in giving the best possible experience to our customers. They have a right to expect the best.

To download all the Customer Experience Value Visit presentations and listen to the event podcasts, visit the event page on the Alliance Member Calendar.

 

 


 

 

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