premera
blue cross health insurance
2019
my role
I was a Customer Experience Design Strategist at Premera. The purpose of my role was to identify the human struggles and experiences one faces when navigating the complexities of health insurance. Who is the person behind the desktop screen, the mobile app, the phone calls, or the mail? What are they experiencing? But most importantly, our goal was to ask ourselves on a daily basis, 'how can we improve their satisfaction?'
Customer experience design strategist
process approach:
understanding your environment
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Optimized user efficiency and experience by simplifying web page information architecture that decreased confusion and navigation time amongst observed users.
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Created service design blue prints that identified customer journey weaknesses and utilized strengths that led to an increase in satisfaction amongst user testing participants.
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Redesigned key customer touch points, including landing pages, hyperlink redirects, mailers, and informational packets.
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Spearheaded research that included launching online studies, user testing, the creation of interview protocols and orchestration of interviews.
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Produced a mixed methods research report with informed recommendations that transformed program outreach, terminology, architecture, and demographic.
Health insurance is a unique environment that leaves an unpleasant taste in peoples' mouths in general. This is an understanding that needs to be recognized immediately, as it does not take a bad experience for people to be left unhappy, just a mediocre one. Health insurance is intricate and confusing, and often only ever gets utilized in a time of physical hardship, which can lead to emotional and financial difficulties. Designing customer experiences with this context magnifies the needs to understand our customers.
taking the time to reflect
With the help of my work journal I kept during my internship, I reflected on some unique lessons I learned at Premera that did not directly pertain to my assignments. This includes a document I created on work assignment prioritization, and another from a Customer Experience Team offsite day. Both of these experiences helped to educate and simplify the complexities of work life. But, I found a sense of mirroring from these experiences that could be translated to the accountability and purpose we had to serve our members.
Research report
I created a full research report of the work I did while at the company pertaining to the improvement of the Blue Distinction Center (BDC) program. While at Premera, I had the opportunity to conduct and collect research and related findings, but did not have the chance to gather all of these findings in a meaningful and easily understandable way. By creating this report, I was able to synthesize all of these avenues of research and customer journeys to make insightful recommendations and potential next steps for the program.
high-level overview of BDC+ program
The BDC+ program provides members with handpicked facilities for specific conditions and surgeries that are of higher quality, produce better outcomes, and are more affordable than others. Currently, there are several different communication strategies for Weyerhaeuser, Nordstrom, and Group 16, that are being used to promote and drive members to this program.
goal of study
Assess all current member touch-points and determine if the current strategies are the best approach for driving members to the BDC+ program. Identify and recommend the most appropriate way to communicate and drive utilization of the BDC+ program, while ensuring the outcome is scalable to multiple groups.
general member journey diagrams
research methods
Literature Review
Healthcare Decision Making Factors
User Testing
Forms, Online Portals, and Mail
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