How many of your customer contacts are turned into marketing opportunities? HealthNow New York, parent of Blue Cross Blue Shield of Western New York and Blue Shield of Northeastern New York, felt it was wasting too many of those opportunities, but wasn't sure how to go about correcting the problem.

The first step was to bring in consultants from Xerox to conduct an assessment-an easy choice, seeing as Xerox is headquartered in Rochester, N.Y. Louise Lavere, director of communications for HealthNow, said the initial plan was to look at all document processes, but the scope proved to be too large and shifted to making improvements in customer communication. “They looked at our technology, our workflow and processes, and our content,” Lavere said. What they found was that HealthNow wasn't personalizing the information it sent to customers. To improve the situation, Xerox conducted a closer examination of the products HealthNow was using; products from Elixir and Compuset for reports and printing did not offer the CRM capabilities HealthNow was seeking. It wanted software that could offer highly personalized communications, could handle the scope of their documents, and, perhaps most importantly, be easy to use.

HealthNow's document assessment team recommended that the company establish a centralized department that would take data about members and use them to create personalized documents, including applications, new member kits, ID cards, provider directories, and benefit booklets. Lavere said that by incorporating customer data, each message could be targeted to that customer.