Health Insurance customer retention – Constructive feedback from our readers

Since the release of our Health Insurance Customer Experience White Paper, we’ve had thought-provoking engagement from health insurance providers, aggregators and customers. These insights uncovered more ‘devil in the detail’ to complement the comprehensive knowledge base in the White Paper.

In terms of observations with customer retention, several funds have had to introduce policies with exclusions, sub-limits and changes to the limits due in order to lower prices and make them more affordable. However, when customers find out later that these changes did not meet their initial expectations and then leave, these products can then become commercially unsustainable and unprofitable over time. This leads insurers to implement more restrictive changes which can further reinforce the ongoing vicious cycle of poorer customer retention.

Customer retention can also be linked to staff retention, particularly on the front line. In Australia, one of the reasons for this is because new staff are recruited into call centre’s particularly during the peak periods of March and June. This is where policy sales increase due to annual price rises and the end of financial year respectively (so tax benefits can be claimed). These new sales staff may not be as well trained on product knowledge or company procedures compared to the usual staff and may provide information that is inaccurate or incomplete.

During this period, the quality of interaction and customer understanding from the call centre may decline and policy sales that occur may be due to aggressive marketing strategies. This is exacerbated by incentives and pressure on front-line sales staff to meet sales targets during a short period of time. It can therefore result in sales of health insurance products that don’t necessarily meet the needs of customers.

There have also been observations on aggregator funds that sell health insurance products on behalf of health insurance funds. To differentiate themselves, these aggregators aim to spend a significant amount of time with customers to understand their real needs and position policies that better suit their needs out of a broader selection. However, they too can sometimes be influenced by policies with the best incentives.

A key issue can occur once a customer has signed up with the aggregator, and their details then have to be handed over to the health insurance fund. This follow up process may occasionally be disjointed. It can result in the customer’s ‘old’ fund continuing to deduct monthly payments while the new fund (that the customer has just switched to) has also begun to deduct payments. Many of these handovers can be messy and as a result cause a lot of customer dissatisfaction and complaints because it relies on coordination between entirely different organisations.

In some cases, this coordination may be seamless, but in others there are competitive reasons why this coordination may be challenging for the customer. This is when the old funds ‘win-back’ teams are not alerted to contact the customer and try and win back the customer that’s looking to change. Although there are regulations to prevent any inappropriate actions from occurring, however there are nuances that allow funds to utilize a variety of different tactics when it comes to trying to retain that customer.

Ultimately, behavior that ends up frustrating customers will cost either the aggregator or the health fund in the short, medium, or long-term, by departure of that customer. Insurers should decide what is in the best interest of the customers when making these decisions before creating solutions or changes to the process.

If you’d like to learn more on ways to empower consumers and improve experience in the health journey, join us in Melbourne for a  breakfast event called Building a Sustainable, Patient-Centred Healthcare System on Oct 30, 2015, 7.30 AM to 10.30 AM (AEST).  Download the brochure here.  Our breakfast event in Sydney was a great success, so if you happen to be in Melbourne, please join us if you are available, and feel free to pass on this invitation to your colleagues in healthcare. Click here to REGISTER

Many thanks to our readers who contributed their knowledge to this article – but who did not wish to be acknowledged – you know who you are!

In your experience, what have you observed in terms of the process of switching health insurance policies?

The Importance of Patient Experience – More than Comments on Hospital Food?

3308600_c71c6e180e_mThe last 2 weeks was a great opportunity to share much the latest research that we had conducted over the last 2 years on Patient and Customer Experience in Healthcare.

The healthcare sector is certainly coming alive this month as I recently completed one of my busiest schedules having delivered 4 consecutive speeches at the Health Insurance Summit, the Health Informatics Society of Australia conference, an Executive Breakfast on Sustainable Patient-Centred Healthcare and the CPA Australia Health and Aged Care Sector conference.

In my travels, I was amazed to learn that many healthcare executives are still trying to get their heads around understanding the importance of patient experience.

Intuitively, everyone believes it is the right thing to do.

Yet, often in Australia there is a sense that if you ask a patient about their hospital experience, then the answers that are likely to come back are comments about the food.

Nothing could be further from the truth.

In 2009, the Mid-Staffordshire crisis in the NHS showed that one of the major reasons for multiple service failures and safety issues was the lack of transparency and disconnect between senior management and front-line staff and patients. Feedback from patients on safety and quality issues were largely ignored.

It began a whole ‘patient revolution’ in the NHS that mandated the need to collect and analyse feedback from patients, and turn the insights into meaningful actions for improvement.

Whilst this may seem like ‘additional work’ for already busy ward staff, according to Sir Robert Naylor, CEO of University College London Hospitals, measuring patient experience provides an early indicator of safety and quality, helping to prevent them from occurring.

The philosophy of being sensitive to front line experience, feedback and comments in order to improve organisational performance may be relatively new to healthcare, but it is well known in the business world.

At one of the conferences, it was mentioned that a former CEO of ANZ bank had a direct line to the Head of the Complaints Department, and wanted a daily update of what customers were complaining about, so he could clearly understand the customers voice through all the ‘noise’ from management layers in his organisation. Steve Jobs, founder of Apple, was also known for reading and responding to customer feedback e-mails himself, so he could get his team to make improvements in Apple products fast, before any major reputational damage.

Indeed, there is a clear trend that smart leaders with decision-making ability need to obtain front-line feedback fast, so improvements can be made quickly. Digital platforms such as the MES Experience platform, which we’ve brought in from the UK and are currently pilot in Sydney Local Health District, is allowing deeper insights from patient experience feedback to be collected, and sent to senior management in real-time.

I’d love to know how you are measuring and analysing patient experience in your hospital and how that’s working for you. Simply leave a reply below.