Jamie Gerrits of Aetna on How To Create a Great Customer Experience

As part of my series about the five things a business should do to create a Wow! customer experience, I had the pleasure of interviewing Jamie Gerrits, digital engagement, and solutions leader with over 20 years of experience crafting and executing solutions to improve the customer experience and deliver expense savings. An award-winning strategist, she is recognized as an early pioneer in optimizing the consumer experience in health insurance. Jamie leads enterprise-wide strategic programs at Aetna, a CVS Health company, to help leverage technology to drive exponential improvements to their constituent experience.

Thank you so much for joining us! Our readers would love to “get to know you” a bit better. Can you tell us a bit about your ‘backstory’ and how you got started?

Originally, I was a psychology major in college. My plan was to be a clinician. I’ve always been interested in human behavior, why people act the way they do and what you can do to influence behavior.

However, when I was graduating and had bills to pay, I didn’t really want to spend four more years in a Ph.D. program. And so, I decided to take a job in business, and it happened to be in health insurance. At the time, I didn’t really have an understanding of how complex the industry was. It just definitely paid better than staying in school. Thankfully, I could move on from the ramen noodle diet.

In terms of learning about customer experience, I started working with a small team to create the first digital adoption programs at Aetna. Part of that was trying to get people to go electronic, what modes of communication were effective, and what incentives work to help people move away from paper.

And that’s when I really started to get a little bit closer to the customer. With that information, we built our email and SMS platform. We learned about best practices. We experimented with what topics resonated with people, what circumstances, like timing, would increase the likelihood of a click, and what would cause them to unsubscribe. And so, that’s where I started to get even more curious about the customer experience. Based on the digital work that I’d done, I was asked to lead the digital business team and a significant digital redesign program for the customer website servicing over 10 million members. With this new role, I was able to dive deeper into the virtual customer experience and that’s when I realized just how complex healthcare is.

Trying to answer the most basic questions in a simple, straight-forward way continues to be a challenge for the industry even now: Where can I get coverage? Who can I go see, and how much will it cost? Our team rallied around the basics. Without addressing those customer needs, there can be no ‘Wow’ experience.

During my tenure with the devoted digital team, we delivered two digital transformations, hired and fired healthcare’s first virtual assistant, delivered benefit information to our customers, and achieved a first digital contact resolution rate of 94%. We also built a cross channel analytics platform and implemented web session replay to continuously improve the experience by leveraging facts and data.

And then from there, I decided it was time to try and have a broader impact on the customer experience. Like customer service, the website and app are only part of what influences and drives the customer experience. Product design, clinical policies, communications, provider bills, state, and federal regulations all have a significant impact on the customer experience in healthcare.

For example, the wait time to get test results is one of the most stressful times for anyone dealing with a serious health condition. And so, it’s up to us to help ease those fears and improve the experience. These were the types of customer experiences I wanted to discover with my colleagues and help change. So, I took on a role in a newly formed customer experience organization to develop and lead their program management office.

We focused on technology, customer journeys, and points of friction or customer dissatisfaction. Do we have the right technology in place? Could we identify people going from one experience to another? We looked behind the scenes of customer journey mapping. For instance, we worked to identify and understand the moments that matter and the challenges a member fighting breast cancer faces when interacting with the healthcare system. We also focused on common experiences, like onboarding, to help members understand the benefits of their plan.

Throughout my career, however, customer service remains one of the most powerful and fertile grounds for identifying opportunities to improve the customer experience. In addition to my relationships with so many wonderful experts across the organization, customer service and data sciences were key in developing customer experience proposals, like a new customer care model leveraging AI and population health data and a proactive pre-certification process.

Can you share a story about the funniest mistake you made when you were first starting? Can you tell us what lessons or ‘take aways’ you learned from that?

When we initially launched healthcare’s first virtual assistant, she was just focused on registration and login. She was incredibly successful and significantly reduced phone calls, so we expanded her to the entire site. We assumed she would be effective everywhere else. But that was not the case.

One of the funniest stories was when a user asked her, “What should I do for broken ribs?” And she responded with a barbeque rib recipe! That became a prime example of why technology alone is never the answer.

Scaling a successful solution does not guarantee broad success. We had a disconnect with customer expectations. We needed to be clear that the virtual assistant could help with navigating the site and retrieving your health information but could not answer specific health questions. Needless to say, we ended up ‘firing’ the virtual assistant and focused on improving site navigation and content.

None of us are able to achieve success without some help along the way. Is there a particular person who you are grateful towards who helped get you to where you are? Can you share a story?

I think it takes a village to raise a leader. It’s not just mentors and bosses. During my career, I’ve been so fortunate to have amazing people on my team. They have shaped me into the leader I am today. Hopefully, they feel they finally ‘trained me.’

But if I had to pick one person who shaped the direction of my career, it would be my former boss, Steve Schneider. I worked for him for quite a long time. He pushed me out of my comfort zone in a big way on two different occasions. The first was fairly early in my career. We had a lot of success with the digital adoption program, and he asked me to take on our member website, which was a huge responsibility. At the time, I suffered a miscarriage and was going through fertility treatments to try to have my second child. While it was a fantastic opportunity, I was not particularly pleased. In fact, I went home and cried because I felt like I wasn’t going to be able to do it all and it would impact my ability to expand our family. But he really believed in me and believed that I could persevere. And, I did. Well, the team and I did. I also had my second child and now have two beautiful girls. I’m so grateful he gave me the opportunity and saw something in me that I didn’t see in myself. I absolutely loved the team I worked with and am so proud of all we accomplished together. Every Christmas, I find myself missing our website launch calls.

Thank you for that. Let’s now pivot to the main focus of our interview. This might be intuitive, but I think it’s helpful to specifically articulate it. In your words, can you share a few reasons why great customer service and a great customer experience is essential for success in business?

People have more choices than ever. And time is the most precious resource that people have. It’s thinking about those two pieces together. If you are not saving people time or making it an enjoyable experience, then they’re going to move on. It really is that simple.

We have all had times either in a store, or online, when we’ve had a very poor experience as a customer or user. If the importance of a good customer experience is so intuitive, and apparent, where is the disconnect? How is it that so many companies do not make this a priority?

There are many factors that go into a good customer experience. With an ever-growing number of customer touchpoints and channels, getting all of them to work together is incredibly difficult to do.

Most companies are now making the customer experience a priority, and the challenge they’re having is taking a mass-production type of approach to solving customer experience.

For example, they believe having the best digital experience or app will result in the best overall customer experience. And, they are allocating a significant portion of their investment portfolios on that. While yes, those things need meaningful investment, you need something that’s going to fundamentally and exponentially improve the core experience. Healthcare is extremely personal. You can’t just invest in digital and forgo investing in human interactions. You can’t re-brand, and then send confusing printed communications authored over 5 years ago. You can’t simply bolt on new offerings, like telemedicine or wellness programs without addressing the member effort, like the registration process for those programs. I think there are many companies that are neglecting the structure and the discipline required to execute a good end-to-end customer experience.

Are the employee reward systems in place so that you’re rewarding a good customer experience? Is there a scoreboard? Do employees know how they’re doing and if they are winning? How are you holding everyone accountable?

The mistake is focusing on one aspect. It’s important to be able to look at the big picture and take all aspects into consideration. Unfortunately, humans are wired to remember negative experiences. So, if one link in the customer experience is broken, you can bet you need at least 3 really great experiences to offset it.

Do you think that more competition helps force companies to improve the customer experience they offer? Are there other external pressures that can force a company to improve the customer experience?

Yes, however, I do think companies need to stop copying and focus on being different. Each industry is unique, and you need to find your own way to offer a differentiating the customer experience. What’s going to stand out for you and your customers from your competitors? What’s going to matter? Southwest, USAA, Amex, Apple…a customer can easily tell you what makes them different. Companies need to stop trying to play catch-up with each other and figure out what they really want to be known for.

A company’s dedication to the customer experience is often revealed in challenging times. For instance, airlines have been hit hard by the coronavirus, but they’re responding very well. They’re being proactive. Even though they are taking a loss, they are putting the customers first. This is one example of how external pressures can show how devoted you are to customer experience. If your company is struggling financially, do they rise to the occasion? It is expected. Your customers will notice that, and they will reward you in the long run.

Can you share with us a story from your experience about a customer who was “Wowed” by the experience you provided?

When we launched our website, we built capabilities to allow us to replay a web session if a customer left us anonymous feedback while on the site. If we saw somebody was having a bad experience, we researched it and tried to reach out to the individual member via email to resolve their problem. A lot of people were really surprised that we reached out and asked what they were experiencing. Since we were a digital team, not a customer service outbound call team, these member outreaches weren’t part of our mandate. The technology showed us something we couldn’t unsee, and the team naturally wanted to do something productive with the new information they had.

Did that Wow! experience have any long-term ripple effects? Can you share the story?

It set the tone for how our team operated going forward, and the best part is that I didn’t tell them to do it. As I mentioned, there was no mandate. It’s just how they worked because they wanted to do the right thing, and our customers noticed.

Ok, here is the main question of our discussion. Based on your experience and success, what are the five most important things a founder or CEO should know in order to create a Wow! Customer Experience. Please share a story or an example for each.

The first is the employee experience. My perspective is you have to assume that your employees want to offer a great experience and come to work to do a great job. And it’s up to you to figure out how you can empower them. For example, my team wasn’t happy initially when I asked them to implement web session replay, because it was a time-consuming and painful project. But once they had the tool to see what the users were doing on the website, they took it upon themselves to contact the customers. The tool made it easier for them to track down the root cause of the problem and solve it.

You have to ask if your processes, policies, and tools are helping your employees feel helpful or helpless. Feeling helpless is like culture cancer.

Secondly, don’t neglect the basics. You could have the best website on the planet, but if somebody calls you and they are stuck in an IVR phone tree, you just wasted 10 to15 minutes of your customer’s time. If your customer wants to engage with you, don’t make it difficult. In our world of AI, blockchain, and analytics, leaders get easily distracted with what’s sexy, new, and shiny. Oftentimes, those misguided, sexy projects fail to yield results while core experiences go unchanged. You should be using those technologies to solve unsexy problems. They forget there are some basic things in their product or a policy that’s causing customer friction. I see that a lot especially when it comes to healthcare technology. You need to use technology. That goes without saying. But it needs to be clear — what problem will it solve for the customer?

The third is differentiation. Experience won’t stand out and cause a customer to think ‘Wow’ unless it is unique and unexpected. Ask yourself, “how am I going to be different?” Oftentimes, I see a company come out with a program or product, and then other companies come out with essentially the same program. Companies need to define new categories and new experiences. Apple didn’t set out to be like Blackberry. Amazon doesn’t launch a new business simply because someone else does. They focus on the problem or need and develop brand new categories and industries. I would love to see more companies become truly obsessed with customer problems and needs rather than their own products or competitors.

The fourth is to develop and keep a scoreboard, like what is outlined in the book, “The Four Disciplines of Execution.’ How are you doing on an individual level? An organizational level? You have to know how you’re putting points on the board.

Lastly, give your company a soul. This is about having a mission and a vision around doing the right thing, not just the most profitable thing. Really look at what’s driving your company. What’s the intention? This is something that all great customer-focused companies have. If all your employees were asked ‘what is your company’s mission,’ would they all answer in the same way?

Are there a few things that can be done so that when a customer or client has a Wow! experience, they inspire others to reach out to you as well?

Make it as easy as possible for your customers to leave you feedback. So, whether that’s interacting with you or online, make sure there’s a minimal number of clicks and effort. To increase exposure, make sure customers are prompted to post positive experiences on social media and get the word out there.

You are a person of great influence. If you could start a movement that would bring the most amount of good to the most amount of people, what would that be? You never know what your idea can trigger. :-)

I would start an empathetic action movement. Humans are built for empathy. That is the easier part of the equation. It is the ability to act upon that empathy and translate it into meaningful action. More importantly, how can you and your company empower employees and even customers to take empathetic action.

How can our readers follow you on social media?

You can follow me on LinkedIn.

This was very inspiring. Thank you so much for joining us!