If payors are to win in today’s healthcare world, they must become more consumer-centric. But how can they best make this transition, given that they have not had to focus on consumers in the past? To help answer this question, we investigated more than 75 leading consumer companies to identify the methods they use to engage consumers effectively. We then reviewed McKinsey’s extensive research into how consumers’ healthcare-related behaviors are changing to determine whether those methods might help payors address the challenges ahead.
We found that the top consumer companies use a similar set of approaches to engage consumers. The approaches focus on five areas: customer experience/branding, channel excellence (acquisition), consumer value management, risk management, and product design/innovation. However, none of the consumer companies attempt to excel in all five. Rather, each makes sure it can perform reasonably well in all areas and chooses to be distinctive in only one or two. We believe payors should follow a similar approach to win with consumers.