Delta Dental of Kansas, Wichita, Kansas, United States: Customer-Driven Innovation

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Delta Dental of Kansas, and our subsidiary Surency, offer a suite of health products and insurance services in the more than 30 states. We have nearly doubled in growth in the last 15 years. Our mission is to improve healthcare through affordable and quality care, reduced healthcare costs and exceptional service. Our focus has led to an industry-leading 98%+ client satisfaction rating. We have shattered growth, retention and engagement records, enhanced our technology, digital solutions and analytics and implemented extensive product and service innovations to support our partners and customers.

Written answers to the questions

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DDKS runs a dedicated in-house Innovation Lab focusing on customer-driven innovation to improve user experience. The Innovation lab organizes cross-departmental innovation teams to successfully implement constituent-generated innovations and process improvements based on feedback by a listening tour conducted by our CEO, Dean Newton. These innovation teams continue to produce incredible results and involved employees from every department in our organization. The innovations resulted in 99.8% client retention and superior customer satisfaction.

Our contact center was recently recognized as a Benchmark Portal Center of Excellence, meaning that they are in the top 10% of call centers nationwide. This certification focuses on effectiveness and efficiency, balancing satisfaction and cost across all key performance indicators. The certification was based on our effectiveness in key performance areas compared to our peers in the industry. (See Attachment 1.) The department received additional recognition from Benchmark portal based on the performance results achieved by our customer team: third highest ranking call center in the United States (small center category), Best overall satisfaction rating (among all companies) and Best overall agent satisfaction rating (among all companies).

DDKS has a Net Promotor score of 56 compared to an industry average of 16. (See attachment 2.) Members also score interactions with our agents considerably above industry standards. Our agents received an overall agent score of 94. Testimonials are included in attachment 4. DDKS consistently receives very high marks with a current overall satisfaction rating average of 93.30%.

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Dean Newton, Delta Dental of Kansas’ President & CEO, engaged with stakeholders during a multi-year listening tour where he personally met and had hundreds of conversations to gather feedback and ideas about how Delta Dental of Kansas can improve oral health for Kansans. From that listening tour, we had four main takeaways:

1.      Make Benefits Simple: improve ways to help patients understand how dental benefits work

2.      Simplify Processes: streamline interaction with our company

3.      Expand Innovations: Innovate DDKS service model to help stakeholders

4.      Benefit Innovations: Enhance dental benefits to improve oral health in Kansas

The ideas from this listening tour directly fueled customer-centric transformative innovations in every area of our company directly leading to increased customer satisfaction. DDKS has an overall customer satisfaction of 93.30% compared to an industry standard of 77.19%, and has an NPS score of 56 compared to an industry standard of 16. Our Customer Service agent satisfaction scores were also 94% compared to an industry average of 53.14%.

We are extremely proud of our results and the dedication from every member of our organization. We understand that great results don’t mean that efforts stop. We look forward to continuously enhancing our customer’s experience with our company.