Just a decade or two ago, health insurers had the upper hand. They decided when and how members could contact them for help, usually over the phone. The power has since shifted to the customer. In the new competitive era of healthcare reform, payers must meet their members’ expectations by providing a consistent level of service across all channels.

This can be accomplished by implementing a customer engagement center (CEC). A CEC has evolved from the standard call center of several decades ago, to now include multiple channels where customers can connect with companies. Contributing to this growth and change is the blend of social media and communities engagement with customer relationship management (CRM) software. CECs also serve more traditional channels like phone, Internet, and email.

What distinguishes a CEC is its ability to retain context about customers’ as they move across channels, while offering a personalized and engaging experience. This service must also be as mobile-friendly as customers are. If health insurers can’t meet their members’ expectations, they risk losing their business to a competitor who can.

Keys to a successful CEC include:

• Visibility into the path the customer has taken.
• The tools to solve a customer issue, even when in a remote location.
• Maintaining context so customers don’t have to repeat info as they move between channels.

Benefits of a successful CEC include:

• Anticipating customer pain points and reaching out to them before they have to contact you.
• Catching customer issues elsewhere (besides standard emails and calls).
• Providing a personalized one-to-one experience for customers.

The biggest payoff to connecting to where your customers are is making them happy by providing them the service they want and expect, the way they want it.

Hear how health plans are improving customer engagement by delivering an omni-channel experience. Join us for the free webcast Optimize Member Experience and Loyalty with Next Generation Service, Tuesday, March 18th, at noon PST, 3 pm EST.

Payers like Health Care Services Corporation (HCSC) will share how they are using Member Connect to deliver a ‘service-first strategy’ to:

• Transform their telesales operations
• Manage a 500% increase in inbound calls
• Improve sales of major medical and short term plans by as much as 200%

To register, click the button below.