The Challenge
The Health Plan client had seen phenomenal growth during the past year, but it was followed by a rate of dis-enrollment that management thought was unacceptably high. They had their suspicions about what was causing the dis-enrollment, but they weren’t completely sure and were unable to act without more certainty and less financial risk to their actions
The Deft Approach
The natural group to seek answers from was the customers who had left the health plan. Fortunately, the client was able to provide a list of departed customers with accurate telephone numbers and other pertinent data. Deft Research designed a telephone survey with questions whose answers would confirm or reject suspicions, and add to the client’s current understanding.
The Results
The results of the survey confirmed some suspicions but rejected others and replaced those falsely presumed truths with evidence.
The client learned:
- That departed customers did not find fault in the sales process (a suspicion).
- A small subset of competitors had gained enrollees at the client’s expense.
- Independent agents were involved in dis-enrollment 45% of the time.
- What were the most attractive features of the new carrier’s plan.
- The issues with the client’s plan that motivated a search for a new carrier. Within this finding they discovered two important points:
- The issue wasn’t price, most new carriers were charging the customer the same or more.
- There was one set of reasons for customer who were with the plan for only a short length of time, and another set for those who were with their plan longer.
The client was able to use the results to develop action plans within several departments. The report identified that some elements of customer service that the client had already tried to fix, were not fixed yet. Deft’s analysis also showed where the client should focus its resources to achieve the biggest gains in quality of customer experience.