Healthcare Insurers and Payers

Healthcare reform creates new opportunities for healthcare insurers and payers through expanding the customer base by 30-plus million of formerly uninsured consumers. But it is also expected to create shifts – potentially radical ones – that affect the industry's main pillar: employer-sponsored insurance, currently representing over 70% of the non-elderly insured.

These important changes in customer structures and behaviors are challenging the industry's current selling and customer engagement approach. Payers who excel in their response will be able to gain significant competitive advantage:

• Many employers' priorities and benefit strategies will change and diverge significantly – how can we get closer to our customers and gain deep understanding of their evolving needs?
• Individual consumers will be much more involved in health insurance choices – how can we become more consumer focused, reach employees more directly and transform consumer relationships (today frequently adversarial) – to attain the role of trusted advisors?
• Shifts in employers' insurance strategies are expected to create new consumer segments that are less price sensitive and have higher value expectations – how can we create stronger differentiation through our products and services, and become more impactful in bringing our value proposition across?
• We need to tailor the optimal benefit strategy to each customer – how can we gain more effective channel control to be able to do this? What will be the role of brokers and how can we engage them most effectively?

More Effective Selling and Customer Engagement Approaches to Employers and Consumers to Gain Sustainable Competitive Advantage

Our Healthcare Insurers and Payers practice helps our clients create sustainable competitive advantage through optimizing their selling and customer engagement processes. We work closely with our clients to:

• Develop the best go-to-market approach for each customer group based on detailed customer segmentation, value proposition definition and customer-to-channel alignment
• Design and optimize sales channels (direct and indirect), including capacity requirements and deployment. Build operational capabilities through effective infrastructure and systems that guide recruitment, training and coaching practices; align and integrate performance management and compensation programs
• Measure the effectiveness of the selling organization and identify the largest upsides and focus for growth initiatives
• Develop competency models and implement coaching and training required for effective selling and customer engagement ("learn, practice, sustain and grow")

If you would like to learn more about our experience within the healthcare insurers and payers industry, please contact our industry lead. We would be happy to discuss our insights regarding key challenges, critical success factors and proven approaches.