Consumers dissatisfied with insurers' health plans, support services

A strong demand for offering more insurance services via technology has been tempered somewhat by negative consumer experiences with digital services, a new study has found. The report, commissioned by Smart Communications and conducted by Forrester Consulting, is titled, “Disjointed Experiences Cost Insurers Members and Money.” It finds that despite signs of progress, many digital interactions are negatively impacting customer experience and ultimately the bottom line of health plans.

“Consumers expect their interactions with health care insurers to reflect the same simple, intuitive experiences they have in retail and other industries,” said James Brown, CEO of Smart Communications. “Health care insurers are presented with an important opportunity to reimagine member experiences – especially during the claims process – by improving their conversations and by making them more personalized and highly relevant, which will build trust and loyalty.”

Still relying on phone calls

The study noted that health insurance customer support lags behind other industries in the use of digital tools, and that most contact between consumers and insurers comes via phone calls. At the same time, phone calls had the highest rating for dissatisfaction, indicating that consumers are not finding good options for getting help with their insurance issues.

The study found that consumers use both digital and traditional channels for interaction with health insurers. When asked what approach they use to communicate with insurers, the results were: 42% by phone, 38% websites, 24% email, 16% traditional mail, 14% in person, 11% online chat, 10% text message, and 10% by app. While consumers utilize a wide range of approaches, more traditional types of communication, such as phone and email, continue to be used heavily.

The findings suggest that consumers were dissatisfied with the results, regardless of platform. “Even with this reliance on offline channels, 51% of members are dissatisfied with their phone interactions,” the study said. “This means members are not getting what they need from digital channels and that no channel offers a great experience. For insurers, continued reliance on offline channels, especially the contact center, drives up costs.”

Insurers struggle to measure, improve digital services The report said that high levels of customer dissatisfaction will be hard to address unless insurers do a better job of measuring and tracking the customer experience. “Less than 40% of insurers track in-journey and end-of-journey metrics, and therefore don’t understand the customer journey or what members believe success looks like,” the report noted.

The survey found insurers list a number of challenges, including: Consistently personalizing member communications beyond greeting them by name (58%); providing members with a seamless digital experience throughout a given member journey (57%); and prepopulating existing member information on forms (55%).

The study concluded that insurers, while they support improving the customer experience, have focused mostly on low-hanging fruit, and are more concerned with gaining new customers than improving the experience of their current members.

“Insurers’ top three customer journey focus areas for the year are researching/selecting/buying a plan, finding an in-network provider, and researching plan benefits,” the study said. “This shows they’re more concerned with attracting new members than making meaningful experience improvements for members they already serve.”