Jane, welcome to the Brand Lab Series. I’m so excited to have you on because a fun fact is that you were the first customer of AE marketing group way, way, way back in 2011, and you were so kind to me through the years, we had a relationship before that as well. I’m really excited to share a lot of your experience and wisdom with our audience today. I’m super interested in the new job you have today at Health Alliance, and why you took on such a big job. I think the customer experience role is still important across any industry, especially healthcare today. So welcome to the Brand Labs. Thanks for being on.

JANE

Thank you. We always knew you were a rising star, Brian. [chuckle]

BRIAN

For those of you who can’t see me, I’m actually blushing now, with my readers on. As we talked a little bit, you’re not new to Health Alliance, by any means, but you are newer to the Chief Experience Officer role. Why did you wanna tackle with a big job? And why is the Chief Experience Officer role important to Health Alliance?

JANE

I am really loving the role of Chief Experience Officer. I have been with the health plan for a very long time, and for more than 20 years, I was touting the brand promise. I was communicating and marketing Health Alliance and our brand promise. And now, I get to help make sure that we deliver on that brand promise, and I really like that. I’ve always had a bit of a passion for customer experience and making sure that things work for the customer, and now, I really get to dig in on that, and I like it a lot.

BRIAN

Well, I know it’s a newer role for you, but it’s also a very new role, actually, for the industry itself. Why do you see it, just in general, as being important for the health insurance industry?

JANE

I think that health insurance was sort of late to the party on customer experience for a number of reasons, part of it being the complexity of health insurance today and our customers have greater needs to understand what’s going on and get value out of their health insurance. And when we saw the need to do more of that communication with our customers, it was clear that it had to be elevated to the executive level of the organization and made an organizational priority. So that was a wise decision, I think, on the part of Health Alliance leadership.

BRIAN

Yeah, I know we talked for a minute before we start recording about that. And as someone who’s helped advise organizations with their customer experience strategy, it’s really great that you got a lot of executive buy-in. You talked about the steering committee early on, I’m sure that helped a lot. And I think one of the things that really impresses me is how important this customer-driven performance mentality is at Health Alliance. We have a lot of experience through the years working together, we have a lot of experience working with a lot of health plans, and some of that is not as front and center as it is for you. You’re very clear and very transparent, even on your website, what some of your data points are like around the customer experience, everything from call resolutions to the average time that claims will be paid. It’s really great seeing that that’s front and center. I’m sure it wasn’t easy to get there. I saw on the lobby, when we walked in, the bright and shiny JD Power Award. Congrats.

JANE

Thank you.

BRIAN

I know people talk a lot about journey mapping, but I think just building a customer experience team and process is a journey in itself. So talk about how that’s been thus far.

JANE

I was pushing for the structure for a long time before it really got legs. So I had been thinking about it and planning about it for a long time, and when we finally had the full leadership buy-in, I started putting it together, even while I was still in the marketing arena. And we brought in Forester group to help us assess where we were in our maturity on customer experience, and some of the things we had in place that we needed and some things we didn’t, part of it was that governance aspect, we didn’t have that. And fortunately, our CEO was very supportive of creating that governance structure, right away. So we had data everywhere that was not organized, not well organized, and once we started pulling the data together in a more centralized reporting fashion, and making it more timely, we took it to our governance steering committee and they were ready to act, and that was great, that was really helpful.

BRIAN

Well, something else that you told me about, which I think was super savvy as well, is that you worked with finance department and you tried to have some metrics around the value of a lifetime or a long-standing member. And obviously, a big indicator for that is gonna be based upon the experience that he or she receives from the health plan. I think that that was a really savvy move to think about that because, again, I think one of the areas where I see a lot of customer experience efforts fail is where you’re not aligned across the management executive team or you don’t get some buy-in from finance because they’re always trying to look at the financial implications of anything that’s ever being done. So talk a little bit about why that was important and have you learned anything yet from some of those values?

JANE

I knew after many years of trying to justify an advertising budget that I needed… [chuckle]

BRIAN

I can appreciate that.

JANE

I needed buy-in from finance. And it started with just trying to find a simple calculation for what is the value of what we’re doing here. And then I brought in finance and it got a lot more complicated, but it was something that they believed in, that they saw and understood, and so it got credibility for what we were doing. And when we looked at the numbers and saw… We were all surprised when we realized that adding six months of tenure, average tenure, to our members meant a $4 million additional profit for the organization. That was something you don’t sneeze at. I mean, $4 million is $4 million, right?

And so then we started… We broke it down by different lines of business and all of that to make sure that we had a reliable calculation, and we only have two measures, basically, you can only do it once a year. And we have seen that you can have tenure increase, but value maybe not increase, and you can have a lot of different things influencing those numbers, assumptions that you make in lots of different areas, but we’re trying to make sure that all of that is part of the calculation so we know that it’s reliable. And we’ve seen improvements, but we haven’t hit the goals that we want to hit yet.

BRIAN

Well, it definitely sounds like you’re on your way though. And I know that I can appreciate your joke about getting financial buy-in on marketing, ’cause obviously, that’s a whole other podcast, but I think…

JANE

The CFO and I get along great, but he gives me a hard time a lot. [chuckle]

BRIAN

Well, that’s a good and an important relationship to have, certainly. And I think it’s funny because it’s one of those, “Well, duh,” moments when you think about business that it’s always harder to get a new customer than it is to retain an existing.

JANE

Right.

BRIAN

But regardless of the business that you’re in, retaining a customer is, I think, really important to the overall health of the business, ’cause if you’re not retaining customers on one side, you have to go out and try to acquire them on the other, whether you’re using marketing or sales or anything else, but that’s just a costly add. So the fact that you could even see what six months could potentially mean and then, like you said, that’s just the tipping point, you can kinda look by product line, maybe some other things, then you’ll get more run-ins over time. But the fact that you can kinda have that, I think, is really good because I’m surprised at how many people still grapple today with all the data that organizations have and understanding some basic acquisition and retention costs. And I think it puts a lot more pressure on sales and marketing. And I know we’ll talk a little later maybe about the role of marketing with customer experience as well, but the fact that you have this financial department buy-in is really smart.

I think another thing that is also interesting about the job that you have, is I spend a lot of time leading customer ideation sessions in your industry and some others as well. But oftentimes, the customer doesn’t know what he or she doesn’t know either and sometimes they ask questions, and even we, as moderators or facilitators, are having to educate them on sometimes there’s things that health insurance plan has to do because of government regulations or rules or there are sometimes things they can’t do because of government rules and regulations. And I find that that’s something that often surprises the consumer, and I think that makes the job a little harder, being a customer experience officer in a regulated industry, whether it’s financial services or health insurance. So talk a little bit about what it’s like to manage customer experience in an industry that has a little bit more regulations around it.

JANE

Well, having been here quite a while, I’ve seen insurance, the complexity of our industry increased exponentially, especially since 2014 when the Affordable Care Act was first implemented. So the fact that customers don’t understand is not surprising anymore. And so we focus most on helping make it easy for them. So we focus on being clear, consistent and compassionate. Those are the big three Cs for us. We wanna make sure that they understand, we want to really see it through their eyes more than we used to, because our processes are so complex and our products are so complex. Back in the day, we could spend a whole year getting ready to launch a product and we could communicate for months about it and we’d only introduce one product. And now we have so many different channels for selling, for distribution, that I marvel at how people navigate healthcare and health coverage these days. It’s so difficult. So our role is really to try and help them do that.

BRIAN

So one of the things we talked about for a minute, before we start recording, is the voice of the customer. Can you talk a little bit about that, and maybe it would lead to some advice for other customer experience officers about how to kind of harness… I think voice of the customer is a is a buzzword like innovation and a number of things, but what are some ways that you’ve seen work well for you thus far in terms of being able to hear a little bit or use some data on the voice of the customers that you can be a little bit more informed?

JANE

Well, I think the most powerful voice of the customer is the in-person voice of the customer. So any time that we get the opportunity to interact personally with customers is a great opportunity to learn from them. And early on, we did some journey mapping and we had representatives from across the organization participating in that. We did internal journey mapping of a customer journey, and then we took it out and did a co-creation workshop with some customers. But just doing that internal journey mapping with a cross-section of the organization, they started to see the complexity of what we were putting on the customer. It was so eye-opening for them. And now we have… We’re building out more member advisory committees, we’re developing online communities to communicate more often with our customers, and really trying to put together the data that we have, make it more frequent.

It used to be we had an annual survey that we worked from, that was it; our CAHPS survey as known in the industry. And now we have a transactional survey for our call center, everyone is invited to participate in a survey after a call, we have a transactional survey around our claims processing, trying to understand people’s perceptions, members’ perceptions about that. And we can deploy research at any time and get really immediate feedback, which is really helpful. No more once a year.

BRIAN

Well, it’s interesting ’cause it sounds like you’re very consistent with not just getting leadership buy-in, not just getting finance buy-in, but buy-in across the organization. I think that’s another thing that I’ve seen has created a lot of good aha moments that have led to empathy because oftentimes, it’s the front line people that are the ones that firsthand see the customer experience. So oftentimes, organizations quickly pluck him or her to be a part of a discussion, but they’re not realizing that there are so many other areas of the organization that ultimately can impact the customer experience, number one, or number two, as part of your three C’s, you mentioned compassion being one of them, it’s like how do you do that?

And I find that it’s often interesting when people start to hear and see and meet with and think about how broader the customer experience journey is than he or she might realize, and how complex. One of the things that I think is really also interesting about your industry is, it is complex, but most of the people that work in it really know his or her stuff, but it’s hard to then sometimes communicate that to someone who doesn’t have that industry experience. I can speak of that myself. You talked about the Affordable Care Act and how being a business owner, and some of the changes that have come, and it’s not even easy for me. And so I think that’s where I think that clear and compassionate and some of that communication is important, and getting the buy-in as well.

Well, you had talked a little bit along those lines about communication. I know you have a strong marketing and communication background as well, you’ve led a lot of that in the past at Health Alliance. One of the things I think is interesting is that a lot of organizations, though, are looking to the com, which when you think about the C-suite in general, that’s also a newer role, considering at a life span of the C-suite, but a lot of organizations are looking to the CMO and saying, “Hey, we’re now gonna add customer experience to your to-do list, to your plate, to your sense of responsibilities,” and I’m not always sure if that’s a fair ask. It’s a big ask. What’s your take on that, as someone who does come with a strong marketing background?

JANE

I think it depends on the size of the organization, first of all. In a smaller organization, you can probably manage that, but in a larger organization, you’re right, it is a big ask, but there’s so much overlap between customer experience and marketing that you have to have collaboration, at least, and especially in the digital marketing space because so much more of our customers’ experience is now based in the digital space that we have to make sure we’re delivering that level of experience in every channel, whether it’s a call center, or online, or whatever. It takes a lot of collaboration, a lot of working together. The marketing people who are always pushing that brand promise and the experience people have to make sure that we’re delivering on that promise, so whether it’s how we answer the phone or how fast we process the claims. The other thing is that in our industry, in particular, we are so closely tied to the broader experience of healthcare that it has to be a collaboration between the health plan and the healthcare provider as well.

We are best positioned for that, as part of an integrated healthcare system. We are all care givers, health plan, health provider. And even at the health plan, we have nurses on staff, we have social workers, we have health coaches, all who are involved in the care of the patient or the member. And we share that responsibility, so it’s really important that we have a consistent experience across all of the organization, all of the enterprise.

BRIAN

Yes. Well, I know we had talked for a minute earlier about some of the confusion that some consumers might have about the health insurance industry. One of the things I often say too, is that I feel like health insurance companies get a bad rap because when you think about, as you were just talking about, that entire health continuum, I can’t tell you how many times I’ve been in customer focus groups and sessions where people are yelling about how they can’t get in to see their doctor, and they’re blaming the health insurance company for that. And I said, “Let me give you my own personal experience. Like Blue Cross Blue Shield is my health plan, Northwestern is my physician. If I can’t get in to see my doctor, it’s not because of Blue Cross Blue Shield, it’s my doctor.”

And it is interesting that I feel like… I think it’s because you guys send the bills, that you guys seem to be the ones that sometimes get the black eye when it comes to the whole experience continuum, which I think is a whole other thing that makes your job that much harder, and it’s kind of interesting. So as we kind of wrap up on the customer experience side, what’s something that you think the industry, as a whole now, could continue to do better with customer experience, or some things you hope that they’ll be thinking about doing in the future?

JANE

I have something I refer to as the holy grail in customer experience in our industry, and that is the ability to bring together health plan and healthcare communication channels, so that the patient/member has access to information from both and can coordinate that information. We’re all speaking with the same voice, we’re all sharing information so that that person is getting the best outcome and the best experience that they can from beginning to end: From I chose my doctor, I chose my health plan, they work together, I get all the information I need in this one place or these two places that I wanted. And so that’s my hope for customer experience in the future in our industry.

BRIAN

You’ve had a very impressive career here at Health Alliance, we’ve talked a lot about it today. And as you think about the rising stars, the next generation of healthcare leaders, what advice would you give him or her?

JANE

I think you have to start with a vision. I think that’s one of the places that we got a little ahead of ourselves in terms of customer experience. We didn’t have a really clear, defined vision of what the customer’s experience should be, so that we can communicate that to the organization as to what is the expectation. We developed that along the way, but I really wish that we had had that to start with, even before governance, because then even the government structure would have had something to work from to say “No, this doesn’t meet our requirement.” So my advice would be to start with a vision. And that’s not unusual, but it was just some place that I think that we fell a little bit short, and of course, start sooner not later.

BRIAN

I think both of those are important pieces of advice, for sure. Well, Jane, time flies when you’re having fun. I knew this would be a good interview, I knew you’d have a lot of good insights to be able to share for our audience. Again, I thank you for everything you’ve done for me throughout our career, everything you’ve done for AE Marketing Group, and I’m really glad that we could finally get you on the Brand Lab Series. So thanks for being on with us today.