In an era where customers are always-on and always addressable, it’s time to drive customer engagement in fundamentally new ways. If customers don’t see value and contextually relevant communications from your brand, they will become disengaged—never purchasing, limiting usage, or leaving sooner.
Retail marketers understand this, and have largely focused on engaging through the channels when and where their customers want to. The trend has even started to extend to healthcare, where payers and providers have begun to adopt a more retail-like mindset when it comes to customer engagement. To illustrate this consumerization of healthcare, Redpoint recently put together this infographic to show how customer attitudes and channel preferences frequently play a key role in health plans’ member engagement efforts.
This engagement has taken on new importance in recent years because of the changing market environment that increases consumer choice among health plans. In fact, 58% of health plan members would consider switching their provider if they had a poor customer service experience. There are also gaps between consumer expectations and experience, as illustrated by 88% of consumers using at least one online channel while 46% of health plans still relay on traditional mail.
To succeed in attracting and retaining consumers, health plans need to change their focus to become more like retailers—engaging their plan members in the channels they prefer and creating an enduring value exchange. This includes touchpoints such as proactive reminders about their current health plan or relevant offers like discounts on gym memberships and health clinics, all with the goal to deliver improved outcomes at a lower cost. This type of engagement will become more real-time and interactive, with 32% of consumers now using a medical, health, or fitness mobile app.
Enhancing member engagement through tactics like data-driven personalization has the potential for a tremendous positive impact, as marketers that leverage member data with high precision enjoy a 6-times greater increase in profits over plans that don’t include a data-driven component.
This demonstrates there is real value in focusing on member engagement. Healthcare payers have a timely opportunity to hyper-personalize messaging and intelligently orchestrate interactions across all communication channels. Delivering their brand promise in this way will deliver better outcomes across the board—for consumers, payers and providers.
I encourage you to download our infographic and share its powerful insights with your colleagues. Customers will only become more empowered over time, and health plans must make changes if they’re to succeed in the long run.
