Consumer-centric Health Insurance Market Requires Consumer-centric Marketing

Health insurance companies across the country are quickly coming to terms with a new reality: the healthcare industry has officially become a consumer-centric industry. A combination of factors are coming together to create a healthcare “shopper.” There is no more business as usual; consumers are more involved in decisions over care and coverage.

As a result, health insurers are recognizing – some more quickly than others – the need to evolve their business models and practices.  This is especially true regarding their marketing strategies: more than ever before, how a health insurance company markets itself – directly to consumers – matters.

A recent blog post from Forrester, “CMOs: Step Up To Lead The Transformation To Customer Obsession,” speaks to marketing managers at all kinds of industries experiencing an increased consumer-centrism – but there’s a major takeaway that’s especially valid for marketers of health plans:

Consumers expect seamless experiences… on their terms.

The Forrester piece describes five behaviors that can help CMOs evolve their strategies to the new paradigm: “accept change dictated by empowered customers, dare the status quo with nimble experimentation, act with agility, participate personally by modeling the behaviors you seek in the team and tear down organizational boundaries by rewarding collaboration.”

Here’s how these may apply to health plans that need to update their customer experience to match the new expectations:

1. Accept change – The health plan must think from the customer’s point of view.  Information that wasn’t relevant before is relevant now, e.g. data about cost and quality that helps consumers with their new shopping behaviors.  Is your health plan equipped to share this information? And, since in the past you likely dealt with employer contacts, is your customer service department prepared now to service individual customers?

2. Dare the status quo – Throw out the idea that successful methods from the past still apply. Look at your channels; revisit your technologies. For example, consider these relatively new (to healthcare) components of good customer communication:

• Are you taking advantage of social media-based and mobile-friendly content marketing?
• Are you having a two-way conversation, telling a story and building relationships with your content?
• Consumers are all about apps… does your health plan have one? If so, is it genuinely useful?

3. Act with agility – Implementing change in a large organization is challenging.  Experiment with smaller slices of your business: a segment, a product or a region. Experiment, test and refine with an eye toward the new demands of the consumer-centric marketplace.

4. Participate – Good leaders don’t just delegate; they engage with their teams. Model the behaviors your employees are going to need to have a positive impact on the (still anxious) healthcare consumer.

5. Reward collaboration – Departments that didn’t work together in the past may find themselves needing to communicate and collaborate to resolve customer pain points. For example, previously marketing’s major role may have ended when prospects became members. Operations may have kicked in with logistical items like ID cards. Today, the entire process – prospecting, onboarding and retention – requires involvement from marketing for a seamless customer experience.

Each industry experiences its share of change. In healthcare, as in the others, the transformation presents new possibilities. In order to take advantage of these opportunities, companies need to quickly embrace the changes and come out with consumer-focused solutions ahead of their competitors.