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Highmark Achieved

Significant cost savings by utilizing communities over traditional ad hoc research

150% increase in research volume, addressing more business questions faster

Flexible and agile research approach providing wide support across the organization

Overview

Highmark engages over 7,500 community members to uncover valuable feedback and respond to business questions quickly. When facing tight budgets and timelines, Highmark taps into several communities to engage multiple stakeholders, including members, employers, and providers, gathering insights to inform marketing strategy and organizational planning.

Over the years the Highmark team has dramatically expanded their research methodology, allowing members to participate in ad hoc surveys, IDIs, concept testing, and engaging activities like discussion boards and quick polls. The variety of these activities has fostered a healthy community experience, leading to strong participation and response quality. 

Recent successes include redesigning critical communications to provide clear next steps after receiving a prior authorization denial letter, based on valuable feedback from 1:1 interviews. Social programs for Medicare members were also improved based on community feedback, and saw positive reactions from members after relaunch.

Program Goals:

  • Gain real time customer insights to inform marketing and business planning efforts
  • Expand breadth of research methods and internal stakeholders
  • Ensure the voice of members, employers, and providers are always at the forefront of strategic decision making

Business Opportunity 

Highmark, an organization focused on delivering superior health services across the US, recognized a crucial need: gathering continuous, high-quality customer feedback despite operating with tight budgets and timelines. The organization was focused on solving this challenge to better inform its marketing and planning efforts with real-time insights.

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Solution

Over the past few years, the organization has strategically utilized their customer communities as an agile, "no-cost" channel for ongoing engagement. Their research program engages over 7,500 total people across several communities and the team has dramatically expanded its breadth of research methods to continuously foster a healthy community experience and provide new opportunities for members to participate. 

Community members participate in many different types of activities such as:

  • Traditional ad hoc surveys 
  • Concept testing
  • In-depth Interviews
  • Fun engagement activities such as discussion boards, quick polls, sharebacks, and member spotlights


The insights generated by the program are leveraged by various departments across the organization. While the marketing team is the most common stakeholder, project requests are also frequently received from UX and brand teams, highlighting the widespread value of the community data.


Results

Community insights have enabled Highmark to take clear, impactful action, improving both communications and member experience. Two recent examples show the immediate impact of their research: 

  • Improved denial communications: To inform a redesign in denial communications, the research team conducted a dozen 1:1 interviews with members alongside an online survey. The research uncovered ways to better inform members that receiving a denial letter is not the final step, instead clarifying the several options and next steps they can take.

  • Enhanced social programs: to uncover ideas on how to reduce feelings of social isolation among Medicare Advantage members, the team conducted a survey and received feedback from hundreds of community members. With member insights in mind, Highmark made necessary changes to the program to address member concerns. The updated program was subsequently launched to positive reviews from participants.

As the team continues to find new and innovative ways to infuse member insights into marketing initiatives and business strategy, the team has actively demonstrated clear business impact. The organization tracks the significant cost savings through using community feedback over ad hoc methods and has seen an 150% increase in research output since launching their communities.

This allows the team to address more business questions and inform a wider range of decisions quickly The flexibility and customizability of the Alida platform and community approach allows them to adapt research to specific needs and ensure insights are relevant and actionable for product decisions, marketing strategies, and CX improvements. 

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Alida is a Community Research platform that helps the world's biggest brands create highly engaged research communities to gather feedback that fuels better customer experiences and product innovation.