The health insurance company as a guide in the jungle of the health system - that's what many insured people want. The Internet and especially Web 2.0 technology seem to offer the perfect basis for this. Gain new contacts, educate, inform - everything online. Companies have long since integrated this channel into their day-to-day business, health insurance companies are apparently far from being ready - this is the conclusion of the current study by TCP and Nielsen "Service check of online services in the statutory health insurance system". There is a particular problem with online dialogue - both via email and website forms. 90 percent of health insurance companies still consider social media to be “new communication territory”, and only a few dare to venture into this territory. In total, only three health insurance companies have managed to consistently place themselves in the top 10 in the “Service Check” over the last three years: BIG, Barmer GEK and mhplus BKK. The study, which has recently been published as a manual, could be a useful tool for health insurance companies to take the right direction in the “Mitmachweb” and improve their online service. The services of 50 statutory health insurance companies were examined from the perspective of customers, patients and interested parties. The approach and method were renewed for the fifth edition of the “Service Check”: Among other things, the category of dialogue ability came into sharp focus. New focuses such as “social media” were added for the first time.

>> The bad news first: Overall, the quality of the GKV's online services has deteriorated by six percent compared to the previous year. Only the IKKn have managed to continuously improve their service since 2008. “They are there - but they don't do enough” - this is how the online activity of health insurance companies could be summarized based on the study results. All cash registers have a website and offer opportunities to contact their employees. However, in too many cases the expected dialogue does not take place.
Email - a problem
As part of the study, 2,500 test email requests were sent, but only two thirds of the senders received a response (68 %), and almost a third received nothing. At the same time, it should be noted in fairness that overall email response behavior has improved slightly compared to previous years. In 2010, three percent more senders received a personal email response than two years ago; six percent more than a standard email; two percent less a pure confirmation of receipt and - at least - the number of those who received no answer fell from 40 to 32 percent. Nevertheless, according to the authors of the study, the lost new customer potential of the health insurance companies is quite high at 38 percent (which is made up of the categories “no response” or “pure confirmation of receipt”).
According to this, almost half of “new customers who are seriously interested in switching to a cash register turn to a competitor cash register in disappointment as a result of a failed initial contact”. TCP and Nielsen therefore continue to rate the overall situation with regard to email inquiries as “continued to be unsatisfactory”.
Apart from the dialogue with the “black hole” - an absolute no-go in customer communication - some consumers could also despair when writing the request itself, as the study shows. Many email forms would give the impression of “unnecessary data collection” due to numerous mandatory fields. 12 percent of the health insurance companies also only made it possible to contact you if you provided your own telephone number.
If the lack of dialogue skills can perhaps be explained by the employees' lack of experience with "Web 2.0 customers" or "digital natives", it is difficult to find a justification for the actual "hammer" of the study. Although 93 percent of those insured by statutory health insurance want their health insurance company to provide “regular information about new, innovative forms of care,” only 22 percent of health insurance companies cover this need. In addition, important information about services would be hidden in scroll menus on websites, forcing insured persons to do laborious research on their own. In general, the navigation structure of most checkout websites has proven to be confusing and user-unfriendly.
But after all the bad news, there is also a positive trend. The hotline availability of the cash registers has improved slightly compared to 2009. Around 40 percent of insurers now offer 24-hour hotlines - four percent more than in 2008. The number of toll-free hotlines has also increased from 26 percent in 2008 to 42 percent in 2010.
Hotlines - slightly better
There are also signs of positive development in the “problem-solving skills” category. The numbers have indeed deteriorated slightly compared to 2009. However, the comparison with 2008 - and thus the overall trend - shows that customers' problems are now being solved somewhat better. 34 percent of those surveyed said they had received a suitable solution proposal - seven percent more than two years ago. The number of people complaining that their problem had not been addressed also fell. In 2008 it was 41 percent; in 2010 the number fell to 26 percent.
Too little information from cash registers
However, there is still a need for action with regard to online network formation. Nielsen and TCP found that around 60 percent of insured people would like more cooperation between health insurance companies and doctors, hospitals, rehabilitation facilities and medical professions. However, only six percent of the cash registers cleverly used the online channel to highlight their contract and cooperation network in customer dialogue as a competency advantage over competing cash registers. So far, only a “handful of health insurance companies” have managed to “develop the online channel so systematically that a consistently high level of quality is achieved in dialogue with the insured at all contact points” - the authors concluded. As negative as the results of the study seem to be, there is still a positive aspect: at least the smaller health insurance companies have managed to catch up with the competition in recent years, according to the authors of the study. <<
by: Olga Gnedina