When we think inside a silo, we make the error of constraining our thinking by considering the customer's problem in terms of our own frame of reference. (Image: Shutterstock)
More than ever, benefits advisors and product providers need to think in terms of finding better solutions for new needs emerging from the COVID-19 pandemic. Learning and development can be cited as a good example of a function that has always been part of business but has largely never been viewed as an employee benefit. We've also seen areas like telemedicine, financial wellness and digital security jump forward as essential and growing needs in today's environment.
Marty Traynor is an Omaha-based consultant in the benefits field. The demand for new and improved employee benefit products and services is clear, but how are we going to effectively address those needs?
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Historically, the way to figure out whether customers have needs that are not being addressed in the marketplace is to do research. We ask consumers which needs for employee benefits are most important to them, and why. We gather information from competitors. Then we take our findings and brainstorm some proposed solutions. We validate our solutions by designing prototypes, which we present to consumers. We ask for their reaction. If they like our solutions, we begin the design and development process.
One of the problems with this approach is it can lead to thinking inside a business silo. When we think inside a silo, we make the error of constraining our thinking by considering the customer's problem in terms of our own frame of reference. As a result, we often miss a much greater opportunity.
Take critical illness product development, for example. Critical illness products began emerging in the employee benefit marketplace a little over 20 years ago. They covered a list of illnesses and paid a lump-sum benefit when one of those illnesses was incurred. Over the past 20 years, working in that product silo, our industry has improved the products by adding benefits for additional events, and variations of recurring or additional benefit periods. There have been a few innovations based on customer research, but overall, the product has stayed inside its silo.
What's wrong with that? Consider that we have been selling a product called "critical illness protection" and yet the most critical illness that has come along in over a hundred years—COVID-19—is not covered. Is that what customers expect, really?
We have been guilty of thinking inside a silo and not using our own experience to ask customers better questions in order to offer better solutions.
Here's another question: Why do we hear every year that employees classify their benefit open enrollment as more painful than doing their taxes? Wouldn't it be a big gain to significantly improve an essential part of our process?
Toyota became a dominant automaker by following a process called the 5 Whys. Their engineers are taught not to settle for the easy answer. We should be doing the same. We need to ask ourselves what the most important questions for consumers are before we start doing research. And we need to break out of our assumption silos. Once we have asked why again and again, we need to ask what's next? What else can our product or service do for our customers? Are we stopping too soon, rather than thinking broadly? How can we make sure we are taking advantage of every possible element of our development process and not just settling for an easy answer?
Let's start pushing the envelope.
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