Menzis

“We’ve accelerated our entire customer value chain. Our teams can not only identify customer issues faster, they can resolve them faster too.”

— André van de Wetering, CIO, Menzis

Menzis creates greater customer value with Salesforce

With 2.25 million policyholders, Menzis is one of the largest health insurers in the Netherlands. In 2015, it embarked on a new strategy to put people at the centre of its business, with the goal of delivering better customer services.

The new approach is already delivering results. With 138,000 new customers signing up in December year 2015, Menzis was the big winner of the Netherlands’ ‘switching season’, which sees all policyholders review their contracts at the end of every calendar year.

“We operate in a very competitive market. Each year approximately 7% of policyholders change to another company,” explained André van de Wetering, CIO at Menzis. “To retain and attract customers, our service has to be exceptional and offer added value. Being customer-orientated is the most differentiating factor in health insurance.”

Getting to know its customers better was therefore a key priority for Menzis. “We wanted to understand our customers’ requirements,” said van de Wetering. “We also wanted to improve our service provision by simplifying it, but without reducing the number of options available to customers.”

To enable these goals and its new customer-orientated strategy, van de Wetering first needed to transform and digitalise the organisation’s IT. “Our existing customer systems were unable to cope with the complexity,” he explained.

After looking at different customer contact solutions, Menzis selected Salesforce. Service Cloud is integral to the company’s new customer strategy and has enabled the introduction of new customer journeys.

Working with Salesforce, the Menzis team mapped out the processes used by the call centre employees when interacting with customers.

“The aim was to enable each employee to deliver the right outcome the first time,” said van de Wetering. “This meant they needed ‘at a glance’ visibility of all previous contacts.”

By combining knowledge about a customer from its first and second line service operations, Menzis has been able to significantly reduce processing and response times. Van de Wetering added, “Service Cloud provides us with a full picture of the customer.”

It took just six months to transfer around 800 Menzis employees to Service Cloud, which went live in the run-up to the switching season. “The implementation and adoption went without a hitch; our employees are very satisfied with the new solution,” said van de Wetering.

As the usage of Service Cloud evolves, Menzis will continue to optimise its contact centre processes and phase out seven legacy applications. It has already transferred its complaints processes to Salesforce. “We now have a much better understanding of the frequency and the seriousness of customer issues and can resolve them more quickly,” said van de Wetering.

Menzis hasn’t just improved collaboration between its employees and customers; it’s empowered customers to connect with each via Medemenz. “Using Salesforce App Cloud, we’ve created a community where customers can collaborate and share their experiences,” added van de Wetering.

Despite enabling such openness, the privacy and security of personal data remains a priority for Menzis. Using Salesforce Shield, the health insurer can help prevent customer information breaches. As van de Wetering explained: “Salesforce Shield is really powerful. It not only safeguards internal controls but also helps us comply with legal requirements. The intuitive, user-friendly interface will help us achieve a higher level of confidence, transparency, and governance across our enterprise-critical applications.”

Customer confidence is both a key priority and a key measure for Menzis. Since deploying Salesforce, the organisation’s Net Promoter Score (NPS) has significantly improved. “When you make a promise you must be able to keep to it,” explained van de Wetering. “We’ve accelerated our entire customer value chain. Our teams can not only identify customer issues faster, they can resolve them faster too.”

The new customer-centric processes will enable Menzis to respond to both existing and emerging customer requirements. “Our customers determine the value of our services, not us. And they decide if they have been served well and want to remain with us or not. We hope that we’ll be retaining and welcoming more customers at every switching season,” said van de Wetering.