How do consumers want to talk to their health plans? By any means possible, please, and right now.
In an increasingly mobile, consumer-driven world, payers have to understand that they're at the mercy of their members, and not the other way around, said Amit Shankardass, vice president of marketing for the Teleperformance Group, an international provider of multichannel customer experience management solutions.
"The healthcare marketplace is changing. We're seeing more and more of a demand-driven consumer engagement environment," he said. "And payers have to adapt to that."
To wit: Consumers want their health plan information as soon as possible – and, if possible, while talking to a live person. A recent survey of U.S. healthcare payers by Teleperformance's CX Lab found that customers would prefer to deal with their health plans by phone (69 percent), e-mail (21 percent), click-to-chat (8 percent) or even mobile apps and social media (1 percent).
Shankardass said mobile apps and click-to-chat are growing exponentially, "a fact that's not that surprising," but payers are slow to accommodate them. Only 40 percent of payers have click-to-chat as a customer service channel, the CX Lab survey found, and while some of the big insurers are getting into mHealth, many are worried about the technical requirements or security concerns.
"Especially with social media," said Shankardass. "The usage of social media in the healthcare environment is a precarious one."
That isn't to say they're not using social media. Shankardass said about 80 percent of U.S. payers do use social media, primarily as a means of "trapping sentiment," or finding what consumers think of them. And what they're finding, according to the CX Lab survey, is that 53 percent of those social media posting are negative, while only 12 percent are positive.
Not only that, but consumers are adopting social media channels that produce the quickest service – 43 percent use Twitter to receive a reply, while 23 percent use Facebook, 18 percent use online forums and 12 percent use blogs.
All the more reason to adopt a "customer-comes-first" policy.
"They have to understand and embrace this concept of consumerism," Shankardass said. "And that means covering all of the forums, not just picking and choosing which ones you want."
For example, while click-to-chat is one of the top three preferred means of contact for consumers, according to the CX Lab survey, only 40 percent of payers offer that service. And those numbers should rise as more and more consumers work online, either from a laptop or their smartphone.
Just as important, they have to understand that each generation has a different concept of communication – that a senior would prefer to talk to someone by phone, perhaps, while a millennial is more comfortable with social media. That's why it's important to adopt – and be consistent is using – all channels of communication.
Likewise, said Shankardass, payers have to learn that communication goes beyond just talking to the consumer, and involves passing along information that's important to them. And make it easy to understand, too.
"Payers have to stand up and rethink how they want to do business with their members," said Shankardass.