Who is creating consumer experience?

There are more than half a million individuals employed by the health and insurance industry, with job titles ranging from assistants, technicians, and analysts, to actuaries, population health managers, and chief medical officers.

Consumer experience at every level

It makes sense that folks in roles like care manager, call center agent, community navigator, or appeals specialist are the front lines of consumer experience. It is less obvious how all of the behind-the-scenes roles also play a critical role in customer experience. From top to bottom, each person in a healthcare organization creates a work product that eventually touches a consumer.

Often, it is these less direct connections that cause friction for consumers and families. When that happens, valuable time and resources are directed at mitigating unforeseen and unintended customer satisfaction issues. With health outcomes increasingly tied to customer satisfaction, this is a risk health care organizations cannot continue to take.

How to solve?

Consumer experience as the North Star.

Organizations that take this to heart view every facet of operations through the lens of how it ultimately ends up in front of the consumer.

If this sounds simple, don’t be fooled. Consumer experience as a guiding principle requires a culture shift and intentional reconfiguration of key processes. This takes time that you may not feel you have. But the risks of not taking the time are too great.

We often use the expression: slow down to go fast.

Slowing down to ensure that each process, program, and initiative is optimized for consumer experience will ultimately accelerate health outcomes and satisfaction.

(Read how Merit Create’s founder improved one Medicaid health plan’s Net Promoter Score (NPS) from -31 to +22.)

Consumer experience may be delivered by individuals who come in direct contact with members, but it is created by every single person in the organization.