Healthcare has been making headlines in recent years — first with the introduction of the Affordable Care Act and on through today as health insurance companies like Aetna and UnitedHealthcare leave the federal health exchange marketplace.
The space is rapidly evolving, which means executives need to prioritize the customer experience more than ever before in order to make it in this new era of healthcare. With Open Enrollment right around the corner, consumers who have never had access to health insurance before will sign-up for plans and will inevitably have questions. Meanwhile, young, tech savvy consumers are gaining spending power in the U.S. and expect brands to align with their mobile lifestyle. With a flood of new customers coming in and a newfound need to appeal to multiple generations, healthcare companies will have to keep customers top of mind, or they'll lose out to competitors.
Here are three steps you can follow to better serve customers, both new and old:
Listen Before You Act
Before you do anything, stop and listen to what customers are saying about your company across all channels. You can't improve your customer experience program without first understanding who your customers are, what they need and how they feel about your brand. While customer feedback sourced from call center notes and surveys is valuable, it doesn't capture what customers want to tell you, only what you thought to ask. That's not enough anymore. Harvesting customer expectations from voice recordings and uncovering what consumers are saying about your offerings on social are two of the many data sources you need to analyze in order to round out the picture of the true customer experience.
Focus on Social Customer Service
Not only can you get a wealth of information from social, but you can also use these channels to better interact with the younger, digitally savvy consumers. Millennials no longer rely on call centers and surveys for help, but instead are engaging with companies on multiple social channels. In fact, according to the Institute of Customer Service, there was an eightfold increase in social customer complaints between 2014 and 2015. That's why it's important to include social customer service in your omni-source approach to the customer experience.
Notably, create a direct line of communication at all touchpoints, especially across social channels like Twitter and Facebook. Customers need to be able to reach out to you whenever and wherever, so you have a comprehensive snapshot of the customer experience. Being active and easily accessible on these channels will help you tap into this market and understand your customer's expectations. Similar to other industries, if these younger consumers can't get the answers and support they need when and where they ask for it, they are likely to look for more convenient, tech-forward solutions, which will hurt your bottom line as these young and healthy consumers offset the costs of your older and more expensive members.
Additionally, with Open Enrollment coming up, it's more important than ever to listen and engage with customers across channels, including social, call centers, surveys and more. As consumers start signing-up for insurance plans, they're likely to have questions or require assistance. If your company isn't actively interacting with customers on these channels, you'll never be able to identify the problems that they have with your company and, most importantly, you won't be able to resolve them before customers turn to competitors. Customer experience metrics can also help you finally make the business case for system and process improvements around plan coverage, provider search capabilities and handling of life events. That's why you need to listen to and engage with customers across all channels. You'll be able to resolve problems as they arise and build strategies to avoid these issues in the future.
Don't Bite Off More than You Can Chew
Change won't happen overnight. An effective customer service program takes resources and, most importantly, time to build because you not only have to figure out what works for your company, but also have to get buy-in from your employees. Since your employees are the ones putting your customer service strategies into action, they need to understand the importance of what they're doing. Provide them with the correct tools and training to proactively manage and resolve an issue, so your customer's journey is seamless from start to finish. It's also essential to communicate how your employees' actions and internal process impact the customer. In this case, information is power.
Focusing on improving the customer experience from the ground up will ensure you don't implement business strategies that do more harm than good. So, start with low cost, high impact changes that make the most immediate difference. For instance, ensure your digital experience is thorough, by providing alerts on payments, enabling only preferred provider changes and more. Next, train your customer service representatives on how to better handle people who know little about the healthcare industry and may not speak the "language" of benefits and coverage. Then, work towards the company-wide initiatives like changing products and services based on customer's needs. When you align executive decisions with the customer journey, you can tally up to millions of dollars saved and more dollars gained.
Ultimately, the Affordable Care Act has irrevocably changed how we approach healthcare in the US. Consumers are not only more involved in their own healthcare journey, but they also have higher demands and expectations. Health insurers need to prioritize building a strong customer experience program now, or they'll lose the edge against their competitors who listen to customer needs and introduce new insurance offerings that keep up with changes. Sub-par customer service will no longer make the cut.
By Susan Ganeshan, CMO of Clarabridge
The views, opinions and positions expressed within these guest posts are those of the author alone and do not represent those of Becker's Hospital Review/Becker's Healthcare. The accuracy, completeness and validity of any statements made within this article are not guaranteed. We accept no liability for any errors, omissions or representations. The copyright of this content belongs to the author and any liability with regards to infringement of intellectual property rights remains with them.