HCF Member Journey Mapping

THE BRIEF

As one of Australia’s largest Not for Profit health funds, HCF has offered its members a meaningful option to commercial operators in the sector. Yet like all health funds, there was a correlation between member churn and perceived value of health insurance. This is compounded by the volume of channels a brand needs to communicate via, and increasing ‘voice’ consumers have in sharing their thoughts (good and bad).

By mapping every touchpoint in the HCF Customer Journey (from searching for cover to win-back of lapsed members), our research identified 3 touchpoint clusters where the brand’s promise was not reflected in the member experience.

The key insight: The organisation treated these key touchpoints as operational activity, not a deeply human interaction (a health issue that needs to be resolved).

THE SOLUTION

By humanising and creating consistent interactions between the brand and members, HCF could maximise the value in every touchpoint; building member loyalty; advocacy and retention. This would also reinforce and verify the brand position of ‘Putting Members First’. This required:

Leadership support and advocacy of the project
Stakeholder workshops across every part of the organisation
An engagement strategy to connect with, inform and drive buy-in
A communications strategy with review and updates to key communications

Interactive workshops were facilitated organisation-wide, giving staff and leaders the opportunity to share their thoughts, and engage directly with the research findings. A wall showing the quality of the current Member experience (across all touchpoints), displayed where improvements were needed. Staff could write their thoughts on what would enhance the experience.

This sense of inclusion, in a specially designed space, gave people a sense of ownership in the process, avoiding the perception of this project as a ‘top-down’ intiiative.

The disparity in how HCF communicated to members (from friendly to downright officious) required a wholesale review and re-configuration of hundreds of communications. To highlight the inconsistency in communications, an innovative animation was developed, showing the how disconnected the HCF tone and manner.

This simple, yet powerful example of the need to create more humane messaging, gave staff an insight into the member experience they had perviously not encountered.