Going paperless and people-centric

Pacific Blue Cross came to Domain7 with a classic digital transformation challenge: paper reduction. The vast amounts of paper claims were a huge efficiency challenge, and a glaring opportunity for digitization. It was time to embrace the power of the cloud to streamline their core business. But where to start?
When Domain7’s human-centered design methods met PBC’s organizational mentality of “member-first,” the answer was clear: start with the people.

“It started with a thorough process of understanding the member and their motivations,” explains Domain7’s VP of Delivery, Mark Klassen.
This early user research shone a light on two areas that urgently needed user experience upgrades. The first priority was the public site. PBC’s site was the external face of the organization and needed to reflect the high calibre of service they aimed to give members. “If we didn’t nail it there, it didn’t matter what happened next,” Mark states.
The second critical piece was the behind-the-scenes platform that a healthcare plan member logged into to manage their claims. This experience needed to be far friendlier and more streamlined. In the insurance sector, the major differentiator between providers is not products, but experience.

In both of our projects with PBC, it was crucial to connect meaningfully with all of the relevant teams in the organization, top to bottom. Our team navigated this central challenge with care. A thorough process of collaboratively engaging relevant stakeholders, involving users in the actual research, and moving openly into design iterations helped keep people connected to the work.

Like many large-scale, complex organizations, PBC relies on several large technical systems. Often, as these core systems age and fail to meet ongoing needs, they’re replaced completely—resulting in large technical changes that can cripple an organization.

Our team saw an opportunity to architect things differently, building one overarching UX layer that reuses components from all of PBC’s core systems. Instead of building many different front-end tools on top of siloed, individual systems, we built one experience layer that draws from all those different places, surfacing relevant information to the user in a single, high-quality, seamless experience.

The strategy gives PBC the ongoing flexibility to create new experiences in one venue, instead of many. And if a system does need to be replaced in the future, a new one can simply be plugged into the central experience layer.

“This technical strategy comes out of a UX-driven mindset,” Marks says. Designed with reusable patterns and components for future efficiency, the new architecture creates nimble digital capabilities, and ultimately a more nimble organization.

Soon after launch, PBC was already seeing the impact, with a staggering 86.5% increase of traffic to the online claims submission tool. By focusing on the user experience, PBC managed to shift users to the online claim process, achieving their goal of reducing paper.

They’re also seeing a significant uptick in engagement with all areas of their public site, and enjoying new streams of revenue from innovative new products. Altogether, it makes a strong case that “Member-First” is the right way to go.

86.5% increase in views on the “Submit a claim” tool

36% increase in page views on Member Profile

20% increase in time on pages across corporate site

16.2% increase in page views

What started as a digital transformation project with PBC became something much more: a strategic partnership that continues to deliver innovation and unlock business value today. Learn more about how a service design partnership helped PBC develop their own in-house innovation team.