Creating content design principles to increase care utilization
Good content design can make life easier for internal teams and help connect people to health care
Situation
Our health tech company aims to take the homework out of healthcare for our members, so we’re always trying to connect the dots to help people live healthier and happier lives. For example, if a person calls with a question about a medical claim, our customer service representative should answer their immediate question— but also refer them to wellness partners or programs that are already included in their benefits.
Challenges
For our users: Even though our members have good health benefits through their employer, (we’re talking tech benny’s) we often find that people just aren’t using the health benefits that they have. And who can blame them? Healthcare in the US is a hot mess. Between finding in-network coverage and deciphering your deductibles—managing your own health can seem like a chore.
For our internal teams: Our customer service representatives are often moving quickly. They’re juggling multiple tickets, answering questions, and counseling our members though the heartbreaking realities of a system that wasn’t set up to be easy. It’s easy for them to forget to tell people about a wellness program or partner that they may have access to.
How might we create effective wellness program or partner referrals that our users will act on — increasing care utilization and improving their health outcomes?
Content design objective:
As the lead content designer, my job was to create content that our customer service team could quickly send to our members that would quickly inform them about an existing program and encourage them to try it out. We needed to connect the dots without coming across as too sales-y.
Tasks:
I worked with our UX research team to understand what our members needed and wanted in a partner referral. Before writing referrals, I combined our research findings with behavioral science principles to create content guidelines that anyone in the company could use to develop better referrals and recommendations.
Next, I collaborated with our customer service leadership team to cowrite several messages to demonstrate how the guidelines could be used to help craft more personable, effective referrals.
Outcomes
My research-backed content strategy and guidelines have been used to effective partner referrals by our customer service, sales, and partnerships teams.
We have written 21 unique partner referral messages that our customer service team can use to connect our members to a program that would be helpful for them. Since rewriting the content, more people have started using program partners, which means they have been connected to care that they need.
