HSAs
Outsourcing: A New Ball Game with HSAs and Consumer-Directed Plans
by Michael Griffith
The 2007 open enrollment season has seen a critical mass of consumers moving to health savings accounts (HSAs) and consumer-directed health plans. Healthcare companies could see steep increases in call volume, overhead, lost customers, and pressure to contain costs.
In order to turn this opportunity into a home run, carriers will need a drastically different strategy than what they have for traditional PPO or HMO plans. Before you recommend an HSA or consumer-directed health plan to your clients, find out whether the carrier is addressing potential service issues.
Consumers have a steep learning curve when enrolling in consumer-directed health plans. They need in-depth healthcare information as well as expanded and specialized customer service. They will have many more questions about plans, benefits, and enrollment.
Expertise is uneven among agents as they ramp up their knowledge of these plans. As a result, customers are being handed off to agents who are more knowledgeable. The ensuing workflow bottlenecks are resulting in more dissatisfied prospects and customers.
Many customer calls related to consumer-directed health plans require basic account set-up information. Agents are typically too highly paid to justify answering tier I and tier II calls.
As customers experience poor service, long call wait times, re-routing, and incorrect information, satisfaction ratings will decline and complaints to regulatory organizations will increase. Customers will depart at a higher rate as they shop for the best package of rates and service. There will be the corresponding increases in sales and marketing costs.
Avoiding Open Enrollment Disappointments
How healthcare companies address these service issues should be of great concern for brokers. Ask how the customer care organization is being adapted to the HSA and consumer-directed health plan challenge.
Business as usual is a sign of trouble. Some companies will try to address these challenges with existing staff. This usually means that highly paid and experienced agents are performing low-skill tasks, such as setting up accounts and handling routine requests. Further, the organization is not as likely to have the staff to provide a rapid response to call volume peaks. As a result, call abandonment rates and call wait times escalate payroll costs for overtime increase, agents experience burnout, processes break down, and customer satisfaction declines.
The Right Outsourcing
Model Can Help
Companies are turning to the following outsourcing models to cut operating costs and keep expenses more predictable while improving customer service:
¥ The completely outsourced solution Ð In this model, the organization transfers customer care business processes to an outsourcing services carrier. While this approach may free internal resources, management has less control over service and little hands-on management of daily activities.
¥ The blended outsourced solution: Savvy organizations are outsourcing tier I and tier II calls to carriers with agents who are trained to handle routine calls. The outsourcer sends other health-related calls to the client's in-house specialists with intelligent routing technology. The enterprise ensures customer satisfaction while diverting basic questions to
lower-cost agents provided by the outsourcer. The outsourcer's standardized processes and flexible staffing allow it to ramp up during peak load cycles, eliminating the healthcare company's need to over-invest in resources.
The Upside for Healthcare Carriers and Brokers
Healthcare carriers that are navigating the customer care challenges with consumer-directed health plans and HSAs stand to reap the following rewards:
¥ Better customer satisfaction and retention.
¥ Lower transaction costs
¥ Less financial loss due to performance penalties.
¥ Expanded market share.
¥ More opportunities for up selling and cross selling.
Brokers who are marketing HSAs and consumer-directed health plans to their clients share in these benefits. When clients are satisfied with their plans, fewer customers are lost and sales opportunities increase.
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Mike Griffith is senior vice president of Sales and Marketing for StarTek. His more than 20 years of experience includes leading organizations, such as CEON Corporation, TeleTech Holdings Inc., Tanning Technology, Oracle Corporation, Pyramid Technology, and UNISYS Corp. StarTek Inc. provides services for outsourced customer interactions. Headquartered in Denver, Colorado, StarTek has 19 operational facilities across North America. For more information, visit www.StarTek.com.
