Electronic service delivery for private health insurance: in response to or in spite of the customers

Banking and insurance services are ideal candidates for electronic delivery (Evans and Wurster 1997 and Rayport and Sviokla 1995). It is unsurprising therefore to find that the financial services industry has been among the earliest adopters of electronic commerce solutions in the provision of those services. However that there is little empirical evidence that this trend is to any large degree a response to customer demand. This paper outlines some findings of a series of focus groups conducted with members of a large health insurance company in Australia. Key findings of this qualitative work were that while introduction of e-commerce applications to their service was not a key issue for customers, any such introduction would need to meet a range of serious customer concerns if it was to meet with their approval. Follow-up research revealed that subsequently, not only the fund in question but in fact all major funds had aggressively implemented Internet payment and claiming. The researchers recommend that detailed post implementation study is needed to identify the extent to which customer concerns have or have not been figured into the systems introduced. The case also illustrates the difficulty that can be encountered in execution of an apparently simple focus group recruitment task.