Despite a down economy, customers are willing to pay for more quality from their health insurance providers, according to a recent survey. In fact, close to 50 percent of those queried said they are willing to pay more for quality customer service.
This is an issue that U.S. health insurers need to address sooner than later, according to Accenture, which conducted the survey, “Seven Secrets Your Health Insurance Customers Are Not Telling You.”
The survey also found that 42 percent of customers had high satisfaction levels while only 7 percent were dissatisfied, a point that seems to be eluding health insurers hoping to translate customer satisfaction levels into revenue opportunities. According to Accenture, only 7 percent of survey respondents would consider purchasing additional services.
With the potential for its increasing member rolls thanks to last year’s landmark health care reforms, health insurers have yet to provide the personalized experience customers crave from health IT investments, according to Accenture. Only 10 percent of customers surveyed agreed that health insurers “tailor my experience to match my needs/preferences,” while more than twice that amount (22 percent) strongly disagreed.
“We expect more personalized customer service to emerge as a major source of healthcare differentiation, much like other industries today,” said Russ Nash, who leads Accenture’s U.S. payer business. “The health insurance industry must use insight driven health to better understand the expectations of its unique customer segments and how to enhanced customer relationships to impact revenue growth.”
The survey also determined that health insurers are not keeping pace with rising customer expectations. Among all five of the areas customers rated most important, the gap between customer expectations and insurer performance was significant, as much as 50 percentage points, in some cases.
Accenture lists the five characteristics that customers rated most important:
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