What Is Interaction Experience Management (IXM) for Healthcare?
By John Zimmerer, VP of Healthcare Marketing at Smart Communications
Patient and member expectations continue to evolve, influencing how payers and providers engage with their customers. Today, these individuals demand more than just efficient claims processing and care management—they expect seamless, personalized experiences at every touchpoint. As payers and providers work to meet these rising expectations, the focus is shifting towards creating interactions that truly resonate with their audience. This is where Interaction Experience Management (IXM) comes into play for healthcare organizations.
IXM is an innovative solution for handling these essential interactions, utilizing sophisticated technology to transform conventional and often complex processes into efficient and engaging experiences. For payers and providers, IXM goes beyond merely improving how they communicate with members or patients; it revolutionizes the way they interact with them across the entire care journey.
Hear more about this topic in the video, ‘IXM and Healthcare’ with Aspire’s Senior Research Analyst, Will Morgan.
What is Interactions Experience Management (IXM)?
Interaction Experience Management (IXM) is a growing technology segment designed to optimize patient and member interactions across various channels. Unlike conventional practices that depend on static paper forms or disjointed digital tools, IXM facilitates interactive, bidirectional communication. This method enhances both the efficiency and personalization of data collection and management, creating a more integrated experience for patients and members.
Industry thought leaders such as Aspire CCS and IDC highlight that although numerous healthcare orgs are striving to refine their communication methods, they frequently neglect the essential task of updating their forms processes. This gap can result in operational inefficiencies, lost chances for customization, and a fragmented patient experience.
Benchmark research from earlier this year reveals that while 74% of members/patients are likely to remain a loyal customer if the forms/data collection process exceeds expectations, 71% will abandon a forms process if it’s too difficult to complete.
Why IXM Matters Now for Healthcare Payers and Providers
Over the last decade, Netflix and Amazon have set customer expectations high, requiring healthcare organizations like yours to answer the call. Members and patients want interactions that are quick, personalized, and easy to navigate across their preferred channels.
In our recent Benchmark study, 83% of survey respondents stated they prefer mobile or web-friendly experiences when completing forms. This means payers and providers must leverage tech solutions that allow them to provide engaging, seamless, and interactive experiences versus static, outdated, manual processes.
Unfortunately, many healthcare organizations still rely on multiple disconnected point solutions to gather and store patient data. Navigating the complexity of regulations across various business units, systems, and channels significantly increases compliance costs associated with frameworks like CPRA, GDPR, as well as other consumer-focused data handling and reporting regulations.
Traditional forms processing often involves first-party data collection that yields low-quality data, which is difficult to share across organizational silos or leverage for broader initiatives. Additionally, the reliance on outdated PDF files introduces inefficiencies that result in substantial costs like licensing fees, escalating technical debt, mismanaged time, and growing employee frustration. These factors collectively contribute to a slow and cumbersome customer experience.
With cloud-based IXM solutions like SmartIQ™, healthcare payers, providers, and pharma companies can transform and streamline critical touchpoints along the member/patient journey, including:
- Administering Health Assessments
- Facilitating Prior Authorizations
- Explaining Healthcare Plan Benefits
- Simplifying Discharge Instructions
- Orchestrating Communications
- Coordinating Enrollment and Plan Changes
- Managing Member/Patient Onboarding
- Streamlining Patient Intake and Admissions
What are the Benefits of IXM For Healthcare Organizations?
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Enhance customer engagement by providing personalized and consistent experiences across all touchpoints, leading to higher satisfaction and better retention. This is especially critical given a recent finding that US healthcare organizations have an average patient churn rate of 48%.
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Reduce customer effort by unlocking existing customer data and integrating with services, from as simple as address, credential, or coverage verification to as complex as applying artificial intelligence to parse, summarize, or otherwise utilize clinical data.
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Lower costs by leveraging intuitive forms and self-service applications, thereby reducing expensive calls to customer support.
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Improve employee experience and boost productivity by giving customer service agents, benefit administrators, and other third parties the tools and information they need to effectively manage health care and insurance transactions, from the simple to the complex.
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Ensure interactions are compliant with regulatory requirements, reducing the risk of punitive fines and reputational damage.
If healthcare organizations put off digital transformation in the data collection space, they risk falling behind and losing a competitive edge.
Interested in learning more about IXM? Read our comprehensive guide on “Next-Gen Enterprise Data Collection: The Role of Forms in Interaction Experience Management (IXM)” to discover how this innovative approach can transform your organization.
Conclusion
As you look at opportunities to invest in digital transformation and innovation at your healthcare organization, remember that meeting customer expectations will continue to grow in importance. With 74% of enterprises expanding their investment in customer experience technologies, IXM represents a vital advancement in your tech stack.
Register today to gain complimentary access to the Aspire Leaderboard IXM Grid.
About the Author
John Zimmerer is the Vice President of Vertical Marketing, Healthcare at Smart Communications, where he acts as a subject matter expert on the digital transformation of customer communications and data-centric, often form-based workflows. Most recently, John has been researching and writing about improving customer experience in healthcare and is regarded as a thought leader in this area. John has over 20 years of software product marketing experience. His areas of expertise include market research, analyst relations, public relations and digital marketing.