CVS myPBM
How might we simplify the new client onboarding experience
while offering the right amount of visibility?
A Complicated & Clunky Experience
myPBM was a sprawling suite of incohesive, internal apps used for different parts of the client onboarding process by multiple CVS departments.
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Our client users and stakeholders wanted less sloppiness and redundancy in the process, so we created a sleek self-service tool to drive efficiency and provide a better client experience.
Also, clients wanted more transparency in some parts of the process. Ultimately, we determined which information we should present and which was too far into the weeds.
Lead Designer / In-depth Knowledge of myPBM Apps
For an entire year before the kickoff of the new myPBM app, I led a volunteer group of designers in an effort to document the inconsistencies across the old myPBM apps. I developed in-depth knowledge of all of the myPBM apps, their corresponding procedural domains, and their users' mental models. Once the new myPBM project began, I was able to bring my expertise to the team as Lead Product Designer.
Mastered Complex Business Processes
Although I had a strong grasp on each app's user experience, the challenge was understanding how the client data traveled between apps and teams. To do so, I led tens of hours of discovery calls to understand the different roles involved and the nuances of their respective processes. I needed to become familiar with this context prior to our official kickoff in order to help lead product strategy for this all encompassing application.
Getting Started
3 Days of Stakeholder and Client Meetings
Our team met in person with executive stakeholders and a few clients over three days to gain context and align on goals and feature sets.
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The image on the right is our output. A large whiteboard showing which features and functionalities from each of the existing myPBM apps would be included in our MVP.
Gaining Empathy for our Client Users
The last day of our workshop was spent interviewing recently acquired clients. We wanted to gauge their level of motivation to self-serve in the onboarding process to help inform our design direction. We also wanted to see if their pain points and behaviors aligned with what we heard about them from our stakeholders.
Key Takeaways
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Clients wanted a single pane of glass for their CVS myPBM service
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All of the clients' tasks were at the beginning of the process
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Clients are not interested in the backend, behind-the-scenes stuff
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They wanted to avoid redundant conversations and unnecessary meetings
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They wanted more handholding when picking benefits programs
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Clients switched to CVS to avoid disruptions to their members' services
Optimizing Onboarding
We began to create a modern, highly usable, digital tool for clients to manage their PBM services. In doing so, we would remove redundant questions on forms and aim to reduce the number of client meetings required. The key would be for our internal colleagues to increase their effectiveness when gathering former benefit selections from previous contracts and incumbents.
Design Principles
Respect our Clients' Time
Audit all forms, remove redundant question fields, and strive to prepopulate entries
Experience First
Apply a modern aesthetic and create simple, guided workflows that compare well against our competition
Necessary Info
Only show clients what they need to know, remove jargon and anything likely to trigger unnecessary concern
Feature Showcase
Plan Approval
The most important functionality that myPBM provides is the ability to approve/reject plan documents digitally. These documents outline the specifications of clients' services, i.e., which drugs are covered, and co-pay/deductible information. This functionality saves clients and their account teams time and risk involved with emailing these documents back-and-forth.
Onboarding Checklist
Clients were tired of asking their CVS account teams for help managing their documents and deadlines. Therefore, we created a simple guided workflow to help them understand their different action items throughout the process. The checklist also serves as an input point into a document repository which would help them manage their documents on their own. Having this information stored digitally would make renewing their contracts easier as well.
Reporting
Once the client's service goes live, they need high-level information about claims, support calls, and their outcomes. Since paperwork and intake meetings stop for clients once onboarded, these data visualizations compel clients to interact with the app. MyPBM provides value by showing clients how CVS is performing as their service provider.
Outcomes
Once clients are fully onboarded we prompt them to participate in a survey detailing their onboarding experiences. The results are really good so far. Click the video below to see the survey.
96% Client Satisfaction Rate
50% Decrease in Onboarding Times
Our work led to a significant boost in speed, accuracy, and efficiency during the onboarding process. The length of onboarding decreased from 4 months to two months on average.
Honorable Mention
A Look into the Kitchen
We presented users and stakeholders with an alternative concept to the Onboarding Checklist, as seen below. It features a vertical scroll with CVS' internal action items on the left and the client's action items on the right. Ultimately, we did not pursue this design direction because CVS' action items far outweighed the clients so that scroll would be very unbalanced most of the time. Also, clients were not interested in what was happening behind the scenes. This was too much visibility and offered little value.
