Customer Satisfaction With Health Insurance Carriers Remains Low. Why?

January 9, 2014

This article is included in these additional categories:

Customer Satisfaction | Pharma & Healthcare | Spending & Spenders | Top Brands | TV Advertising

ACSI-Customer-Sat-Health-Insurance-Sector-Jan2014The health insurance sector is obviously going through numerous changes, and as individuals shop for coverage on health insurance exchanges, a recent report from the American Customer Satisfaction Index (ACSI) sees the potential for health insurance carriers to compete on customer satisfaction as well as on pricing. For the time being, though, it doesn’t seem as though any single carrier is running away from the competition.

In its latest customer satisfaction ratings, the ACSI revealed that the index score for the health insurance industry at-large was 73, up a point from 2012. The ACSI ratings are based on a 100-point scale, with 80 generally perceived as the threshold of excellence. For context, the health insurance sector has a higher overall customer satisfaction score than perennial industry laggards such as airlines (69) and pay-TV service providers (68). But, of 43 industries measured by the ACSI, the health insurance sectors ranks above only 5 others. Indeed, among finance and insurance sectors, it comes in significantly below credit unions (85), life insurance (83), property and casualty insurance (81), and banks (78).

Blue Cross and Blue Shield continues to be the industry leader, but with a score of 74 (up a point over 2012), it only edges the industry aggregate score by a slim margin. WellPoint (up 3 points to 73) is next, followed by UnitedHealth (flat at 70) and Aetna (up 2 points to 69). The aggregate of smaller insurers – such as Cigna and Humana – rose a point to 72 in last year’s survey.

So what are health insurers doing well – and in what areas are they failing? The ACSI data indicates that customers are generally satisfied with their access to primary care doctors (82), specialty care doctors and hospitals (81). Interestingly, they also seem to be fairly satisfied with claims, ranging from the ease of submitting a claim (79) to coverage of standard medical services (78) and the timeliness of claims processing (76). Perhaps encouragingly for insurers, carriers appear to be falling behind in an area that should be less complex to resolve: their multi-channel communications. Customers’ satisfaction with carriers’ websites averaged out at just 73, with the call center satisfaction score (72) even lower.

While consumers are least satisfied with the range of plans available for them to choose from (71), the ACSI notes that this dissatisfaction could reflect employer choices as much as the insurers themselves.

In other healthcare-related research:

  • The top 1% of patients in the US by health care expenses accounted for 21.4% of total health spending in the US in 2010, according to a report from the Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality;
  • As would be expected, healthcare marketing activities rose during the first 10 months of 2013, per Eloqua data, with payors and providers particularly active; and
  • Health insurers, state-run exchanges and the federal government poured in $194 million in local TV ad buys between October 1 and November 10, 2013, per Kantar Media data cited by the Wall Street Journal. TVB expects that insurers will spend $500 million on such ads in 2014 – and $1 billion overall in 2014 and 2015.

About the Data: The ACSI Finance and Insurance Report 2013 is based on interviews with 5,296 customers, chosen at random and contacted via telephone and email between July 10 and September 4, 2013. Customers are asked to evaluate their recent experiences with financial services provided by the largest companies in terms of market share, plus an aggregate category consisting of “all other”””and thus smaller””manufacturers.

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