At CVS Health®, we meet consumers at touchpoints throughout their health care journey, from picking up a prescription at their local CVS Pharmacy® to speaking with an Aetna® representative following a life-changing diagnosis. While health care is complex, leveraging consumer feedback to listen, learn and act allows us to deliver a more personalized health care experience.
While there are different strategies for achieving a consumer-centric approach, ours started with a perspective change and adopting the Net Promoter System — a closed-loop feedback (CLF) framework that categorizes consumers into promoters, passives and detractors based on their likelihood to recommend an organization.
In this case study, we look at how CVS Specialty®, a CVS Health company providing pharmacy services to specialty patients with complex and chronic conditions, has used this system to:
- Reduce time required to service patients end-to-end
- Improve cross-functional and operational workflows
- Increase digital share leading to lower overall cost-to-serve
To learn more, read the full case study (PDF).
By prioritizing CLF and keeping the consumer top of mind for every decision, we simplify the health care experience by removing barriers and ensuring we are providing trusted, dependable care. For CVS Specialty, this approach has streamlined consumer interactions, including faster prescription fill times, enhanced self-service digital capabilities and greater medication compliance, leading to lower medical costs and bills.
Creating a consumer-centric approach to personalized health care
It all starts from within. How colleagues support and treat each other will ultimately determine how they deliver care for customers and patients. To drive collective action, CVS Specialty developed an internal engagement campaign to reinforce the importance of working together as a team and leading with compassion. The campaign also included messages from patients, with personal anecdotes about the impact of CVS Specialty on their lives.
While the engagement campaign successfully kicked off momentum, a culture shift requires frequent and consistent effort. To continue driving the strategy forward, leaders remained intentional about highlighting patient feedback to celebrate individual and team wins.
Then, once colleagues understood the vision, it came time to focus on survey responses. The initial scope was centered around following up with detractor respondents who submitted zero to two scores (out of 10) on surveys. After testing and learning, CVS Specialty was able to expand their CLF to all respondents (zero to 10 scores) with the goal to provide a more personalized health care experience and achieve the following:
Incentivize promoters to remain promoters
Transform passives to promoters
Address concerns raised by detractors
Continue to inspire and motivate colleagues
Monitor impact across all survey respondents
The team leveraged and refined response templates with personalized messaging, allowing colleagues to customize responses for detractors, passives, and promoters. To ensure patients felt seen and heard, personalized templates were critical in ensuring responses were appropriate and had an empathetic tone based on the patient’s individual situation.
The importance of consumer centricity in health care
As the nation’s leading specialty pharmacy serving 1.4 million patients, CVS Specialty understands that helping patients with their health care and treatment plans is incredibly personal. Unlike other consumer-centric industries, our consumers don’t want - but need - these services. Patients need to know that they can trust and depend on us to help them navigate these often overwhelming and fearful moments.
The best way to build trust is to listen and then act. By responding to patient feedback and leading with empathy, CVS Specialty was better able to identify pain points, solve patient problems, discover root cause issues, and escalate necessary process changes. It also allowed frontline colleagues to experience a greater sense of fulfillment from making a real difference in patient lives, as well as creating more time, space, and energy to drive strategic optimization and innovation.
Consumers are a mirror into your organization, and when you look to them, they will tell you where to focus your efforts. By keeping this top of mind and viewing your business from an outside-in perspective, you’re better positioned to provide great, personalized care for patients and recognize colleagues for making a real difference in patients’ lives. Ultimately, a consumer-centric approach fosters a cycle of happier, healthier patients and more engaged, satisfied colleagues.
To learn more about the CVS Specialty team’s key findings and takeaways, read the full case study (PDF).
