Report from Forrester Research points to great improvement, understanding goal hasn't been achieved

bcbsm

| 2 min read

The news from Forrester Research about our Customer Experience scores sound great. BCBSM saw the biggest gains of any company involved in their research this year, a 22-point improvement from last year. This brings our company up to second place in the health insurance industry. Our members surveyed say their experience with us is more enjoyable, our communication is easier to understand and it is more useful than it was before. This is exactly the kind of news we wanted to hear when we started our journey to better understand our members in 2009. It is a journey we have co-created with our members. As Forrester points out, “Instead of redesigning its explanation of benefits (EOB) in a vacuum, the firm asked health plan members what their ideal EOB would look like. In a 2-hour workshop, customers cut up and then reassembled sections of content from several different EOB formats, showing the insurer exactly what information they wanted to see and the order in which they wanted to see it.” We have also actively engaged our employees by designing an experience that walked them through what our members experience when they have a card from The Blues. This award winning experience helped us understand what our members liked, and did not like, about their experience with our enterprise, so we can understand where we need to work to make our experience better. This is a journey. While we appreciate Forrester’s recognition for our efforts, health insurance as an industry still lags behind all others in overall customer experience. Our goal is larger than providing the best Customer Experience in the industry; we want to have our name mentioned in the same breath as USAA, Amazon, Courtyard by Marriott and Old Navy. Our campaign to make all of our member communication materials clear and simple to understand launched last year, and the effects are starting to be felt. We actively use feedback from our members to improve our Customer Experience, including the feedback we receive from our social media outposts. While this recognition is nice, it serves as a reminder for how much work we have to do so our members have an excellent experience with BCBSM wherever they need us. You certainly deserve it.
MI Blues Perspectives is sponsored by Blue Cross Blue Shield of Michigan, a nonprofit, independent licensee of the Blue Cross Blue Shield Association